Dempo outclass FC Goa in GPL

Latesh Mandrekar scored the brace, while Mario Mascarenhas and Beevan D’Mello added to the tally in the Golden Eagles win...

Dempo Sports Club registered a hammering 4-0 win over FC Goa in the Goa Professional League match played at Duler Stadium earlier today.

It was a dramatic start for the five times I-League winners as they had to come back twice against Vasco SC to defeat them in their first match. Whereas, the Goan ISL franchise drew against Sporting Clube de Goa in the last match.

FCG coach Clifford Miranda was forced to make lots of changes to his side as their most of the players were busy with pre-season in Spain with the senior squad. While Kapil Hoble and Nickson Castanha were back in the blue jersey for Dempo.

Dempo had an early chance in the match as Nickson came up a fine cross to find Beevan D’Mello with just keeper to beat but the striker shot wide from point-blank range. Next few minutes witnessed a midfield play from both the sides which ended up with the Guars creating the best chance of the session when Aaren D’Silva was set up in front of the goal with a long ball from Hayden Fernandes, but the frontman saw his tap miss the target narrowly.

In the counter-attack, Dempo also had a chance to take the lead but Goan keeper Iprotip Das came up with fine save to deny Latesh Mandrekar’s efforts from the top of the box, the ball later travelled to Beevan in the box whose shot hit the defender and went out for a corner.

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After wasting so many chances, Dempo finally opened their tally in the 32nd minutes as Latesh made no mistake to tap the ball home off Nickson’s low cross from the right, making it 1-0 for the Golden Eagles.

Seven minutes later, Dempo doubled their lead when Nickson’s long ball saw a frail clearance by Brian Faria in the box, taking advantage of the same Latesh shot past the Goan keeper to make it 2-0 for his side.         

Like in the first half, Dempo were dominant side in the second session but failed to capitalise their chances on many occasions. The Goan defence led by Meldon D’Silva did the best job to hold the Golden Eagles with an excellent defending.

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Dempo added two more goals in the last quarter of the match as first, Mario headed in from inside the box off Nickson’s curling free-kick.  A minute later, Beevan had an opportunity to further extend Dempo’s lead but his blistering strike from 6-yards was brilliantly blocked by Goan defender Meldon.      

However, a few minutes later Beevan made no mistake to make it 4-0 as the frontman's  powerful header finished in the net outreaching the fully stretched Goan keeper Iprotip, off Mario Mascarenhas corner.