Mohun Bagan, reduced to 10 men, fought hard to set up a title clash with Churchill Brothers in the final after scrapping past fighting Chirag United 5-4 via tie-breaker in the second semis at Yuba Bharati Krirangan here today. The penalty shoot-out was employed when scheduled 90 mintues and extra 30 minutes had failed to yield any result between the two local outfits for 114th IFA Shield championship on the synthetic turf.
Mohun Bagan coach Karim Bencherifa won a tactical fight over his counterpart Subrata Bhattacharjee, employing captain Sangram Mukherjee to guard the post replacing Shilton Pal in the 118th minute, obviously looking for tie-breaker for decider. Mukherjee, who also did not play in the last qualifying play, did what Becherifa wanted saving first and only shot from Jayanta Sen, that clicked for 5-4 decider.
Marcos Pereira, Rakesh Mashi, Snehashish Chakraborty, Sur Kumar Singh and James Singh socred for Bagan and Puiya, Du, Lal Kamal Bhowmick and Subhashish Roy Chowdhury struck for Chirag United in the shootout.
India champions Churchill Brothers also moved into the final via tie-breaker 4-2 after being held 1-1 by Air India yesterday.
The final will be held on Saturday.
Mohun Bagan's striker Edeh Chidi, who scored two goals in the opener, was red carded inside 10 minutes for head butting rival stopper Du, who was also shown yellow card by Jharkhand referee OP Thakur.
The ugly offence happened when an aerial clash for the ball floored the two foreigners and on rise Edeh Chidi head butted Du, who bled profusely attracting the referee's attention.
Despite red carded Chidi refused to move but Marcos and Karim Bencherifia coming out of bench took him out.
Chidi misses the final against Churchill Brothers on September 12 at YBK.
Though the play did not produce any goal in 120 minutes of play, both had created opportunities only to be stopped by the rival goalies. Shilton Pal should be given credit for taking Bagan to the tie-breaker. At least two goal-bound shots, one from Perminder Singh, were saved by Pal.
Though the ball moved fast, the synthetic turf failed to produce results before the tie-breaker for the last two games of the country's best teams.
From the archive. First published on footballkerala.com on Thursday 10 September 2009, restored from the site's 2012 database. Text as originally published.