Sporting Clube de Goa aim to qualify for Semi’s 
In what was widely believed to be “the group of death” is now being coined “the group of resuscitation,” as Sporting Clube de Goa gets ready to lock horns with Rangdajied United, in a final round match of Group “B” in the 35th Federation Cup, organized by the AIFF at Kerala on Tuesday.
In the other exciting group “B” encounter, Bengaluru FC takes on East Bengal. All four teams still have at least a fighting chance of pulling through to the semi-finals.
After two matches, Bengaluru is currently leading the table with 4 points, followed by Sporting Goa with 3 points, Rangdajied has 2 points and East Bengal has a solitary point in the kitty.
After just 66th minutes into their first group game, it looked like Sporting Goa breathed their last breath when they were trailing by four goals to Bengaluru. But then a rare specimen called “team spirit” threatened to manifest and in the last 16 minutes Sporting Goa clawed back three goals through Boima Jerry Karpeh and substitutes Beevan D’Mello and Victorino Fernandes.
Despite Bengaluru eventually winning 5-3, the Goan “team spirit” was carefully bottled and taken back to the training ground for further analysis.
In their next match, Oscar Bruzon’s men took an early lead through Victorino Fernandes, but in the second session East Bengal pegged them back to 1-1 and elimination from the tournament looked inevitable. It was then left to “team spirit” once again to remedy the situation as Beevan D’Mello popped up for the Flaming Oranje to score the winning goal in the final five minutes.
Rangdajied can also subscribe to that “team spirit”, as they have quietly stayed unbeaten in the tournament so far with a 1-1 draw against East Bengal, followed up with a similar 1-1 result against Bengaluru, when they managed to equalize in the last ten minutes to keep their campaign hopes alive.
The Sporting Clube de Goa v. Rangdajied game is set to kick off at 5pm, while the Bengaluru FC game against Kingfisher East Bengal is scheduled to follow at the same venue, MDS Complex, Manjeri.
Since all four teams are still in the race to qualify for the semi-finals, Sporting Clube de Goa has requested the organizers to host the matches simultaneously in the spirit of fair play.
PHOTO: Sporting Clube de Goa charged up and ready to go all out for victory.
Sporting Clube de Goa 