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Sporting Clube de Goa took home full three points against Dempo SC in a key encounter of the GFA’s Goa Pro League. The Flaming Oranje beat the Golden Eagles 1–0 courtesy Victorino Fernandes’ 93rd minute header.
Sporting Goa Gaffer Mateus Costa played the familiar 4-1-4-1 formation while making two changes to the side that drew against Calangute Association, Shawn Noronha and Joseph Pereira came in for Harpreet Singh and Akeraj Martins.
It took a good 18 minutes from the kick off for the fans to see the first goalmouth action, Sporting Goa’s Victorino made a promising run on the right to flick it back to an overlapping Harshad Naik whose thunderbolt shot curled away from the nets.
Dempo SC got their first piece of action around the half-hour mark when the Nigerian Felix Chidi got hold of a good ball at the edge of the box and shot it inches away from the target. In the 32nd minute Quan Gomes and Glan Martins combined well to display some entertaining one touch football to beat a swarm of defenders but couldn’t convert the same. Dempo once again came close in the 41st minute when Anthony D’Souza’s free kick went screaming past Joaquim Abranches who failed to make the decisive connect. The match stayed goalless at halftime.
Crossing over Sporting Goa were more determined to do the damage on their opponents as coach Costa introduced fresh players in Mauvin Borges and Marcus Mascarenhas trying to sneak one in using their pace. However this time Dempo were the first to look dangerous when Mario Mascarenhas set Abranches with a good ball in the 48th minute but the latter lacked the finishing touch.
Soon Sporting Goa responded with a fantastic run between Ganesh Thakur and Victorino with the latter missing narrowly his chance to net the ball in. In the 59th minute Abranches once again came in the scoring range but his shot went straight into the hands of an alert keeper Ravi Kumar.
After this Sporting Goa took charge of the matters on field. Quan Gomes and Glan Martins and Ganesh Thakur made some good moves among themselves trying to find Victorino upfront. The Dempo defenders were finding it hard to handle the pace of Marcus & Victorino. At an hour mark Victorino got all the spectators at the edge of their seats with a dazzling run beating 3 defenders in the box but once again the final touch went inches wide of target. Just when everyone had thought the match would end in a stalemate Sporting’s pressure techniques paid off. In the last minute of the added time Quan collected a good ball from the mid and sneaked a pin point cross finding Victorino who this time perfected his jump beating keeper Tyson Caiado to secure full three points for Sporting.
With this win Sporting Clube de Goa have eight points and move up one place into fourth position of the Goa Pro League with a match in hand.
