Churchill Brothers beat CSM Taleigao in the Goa Pro League

Doyl D’Silva scored the only goal of the match in the 88th minute...

Churchill Brothers Sports Club edged past Clube Sao Miguel de Taleigao as they registered a hard fought 1-0 win in the Goa Professional League match played at Ambelim Ground earlier today. The coach Pascoal Pereira made four changes in the starting XI as Vikram Balekar, Minesh Kunkolkar, Octivio Miranda and Salu Santos were back in the team. While Churchill coach Alfred Fernandes changed half of his team, bringing in Vivek Gulati, Ramandeep Kumar, Mickey Vaz, Sagar Limbo. He also gave a first start to goalkeeper Aliston Fernandes and newly signed striker Doyl D’Silva. Both the teams were struggling in the bottom half of the league table as Churchill faced back-to-back defeats against Guardian Angel SC. While Taleigao had also suffered defeat in their last two matches against table-toppers Sporting Clube de Goa. Though Churchill players irritated Taleigao by keeping the ball for the first ten minutes, Taleigao came up with the first chance of the match but Guatam Dias failed to connect Octavio’s low cross from the right. One again Octavia came up with a superb cross in the box with a beautiful headed pass to Gaurav Kankonkar. But the midfielder failed to keep his shot on target from close range. One more chance went begging when Guatam’s weak shot was easily collected by Churchill keeper Aliston. Guatam was once again at fault for no converting an easy chance when he failed to put power in his shot from close range off Octavio’s perfect cross, which directly went into the waiting hands of keeper Aliston. The Red Machines’ only chance of the first half came in the dying minutes, but Basant Rai’s powerful shot from the edge of the box missed the target by a few inches. The second half was equally contested by both the teams, but the team from the North were looking more potent in attack and marched many times on the opponent’s danger area. Taleigao’s Sherwin Lobo was outstanding in the entire match and helped the attack with excellent service. In one of his set-pieces, he tried to find a well positioned Gaurav in the box with a curling free kick. But despite having an advantage over the ball, lazy Gaurav did not attempt a free header and the ball went to the Churchill keeper Aliston. At the other end, Churchill came close to scoring but substitute Divyansh Sudan failed to control his header. On the counter-attack, Taleigao’s Manuel Fernandes tried his luck from distance, only to see it go inches over the crossbar. Even after dominating in the major parts of the match Taleigao did not find the winner but Churchill’s Doyl punished them for their one defensive error and took the Varca based club into the lead in the dying minutes of the match. Basant sent a long throw in the box, Taleigao defenders failed to clear it and the ball rolled to keeper Rohan Shaikh, who failed to collect it. Taking advantage, Doyl tapped the ball in the back of the net and confirmed three points for the South Goan club. Churchill Coach Alfred was not happy with team performance and expressed his unhappiness by saying “I am not happy. We were lucky to get three points. At present we are not performing well. We need to improve.” With today’s win, Churchill moved to 8th place with 10 points from 12 matches. While Taleigao will remain at the bottom of the league table with just 3 points from 12 matches.