Ronaldo Oliveira shines in Salgaocar’s massive win over Bardez

The Greens closed the gap at the top of the table.

Ronaldo Oliveira scored four goals as Salgaocar FC registered an overpowering 5-0 win over Bardez FC in the Goa Professional League match, played at Duler Stadium earlier today. Sanson Pereira scored the other goal for the Greens.

With today’s win, Salgaocar are placed fourth in the table with 29 points from 14 outings, while, Bardez are struggling in the relegation zone as they are bottom of the table with just six points from 17 matches.

The Greens who had suffered a massive 6-1 defeat against Churchill Brothers in the last match, took just six minutes to open their tally as Samuel Costa made a perfect through pass to Sanson Pereira in the box who covered few steps and shot past Bardez keeper Elesh Shirvoikar from 10-yards to make it 1-0.

The next 10 minutes were completely dominated by the Vasco based club but their star forwards Ronaldo Oliveira and Devendra Murgaonkar failed to capitalise on a few occasions. However, in the 20th minute, Ronaldo made no mistake to register his name on the score sheet as after getting a pin-point perfect cross from U-20 Rollwin Almeida, the forward finished the ball at the far post with a stiff grounder from just inside the box to double the lead for the Green Brigade.

Salgaocar should have scored at least three more goals in the next 15 minutes but every time Devendra failed to in the final third as first he shot wide from inside, off Sanson’s cut back, whereas, the forward failed to tap the ball home from point-blank range on a couple of occasions.

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Salgaocar once again came close to scoring in the 35th minutes but Samuel saw his sparkling shot rebound off the crossbar. However, Ronaldo scored his second and team’s third in the 37th minute when their skipper Godfray Mascarenhas found the No. 10 with a low cross from the right where Ronaldo smartly chipped the ball above onrushing Bardez keeper Elesh to put his side on the driver seat before the halftime.

Bardez boss Savio D’Souza brought in U-20 midfielder Richard Cardoz and the mideo brought pace in the match as Bardez were more sharped in the second session with their attacks but excellent defending by Salgaocar's last line restricted them from finding the net.

Richard himself had a chance at the hour mark to reduce the margin for his side but his powerful shot was divingly saved by Salgaocar custodian Nora Fernandes. Two minutes later, Bardez came with another swift attack as this time, Rudresh Mandrekar tried his luck from the edge of the box only to see it missed the target by hairline distance.

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At the other end, Devendra continued to miss easy opportunities as his goalbound shot from 6-yards was cleared by Bardez defender Stephen Martin. However, he came with a perfect cross to Ronaldo in the 83rd minute, who completed his hattrick with brilliant footwork from the goalmouth to make it 4-0 for the Greens.

Energized by a hattrick, Ronaldo scored the fifth for his team in the 89th minutes as he covered some ground after getting a long pass from his teammate Arif Patan and clinically finished the ball in the back of the net, hammering the final nail on Bardez’s coffin.