Mumbai hammer high flying Satara to set up Nagpur semi-final

by Kaushal Shukla December 14, 2015

Mumbai District moved into the semi-finals of Maharashtra Inter District Football Championship for Sub-Junior Boys 2015 with a 8-0 thrashing of in-form Satara on Monday morning to set up a mouth watering semi-final clash with Nagpur who won their quarter final game against Jalna by a margin of 3-1 on Monday.

Satara came into the Quarter Final game against Mumbai in top form after slamming twenty goals in the first three rounds. However they met their match in the shape of Mumbai who took the game to Satara right from the word go and pushed them back in their own half.

Satara resisted the pressure well in the first quarter of the game, but the pressure eventually told in the 18th minute when Ridge D’Mello pounced on a rebound off the Satara goalkeeper who had made a reflex save to deny Mumbai just moments earlier.

Mumbai had their tails up after the first goal and doubled their tally just six minutes later through Atharv Shinde as Mumbai went into the interval on the front foot.

The second half had a similar pattern as the first half as Satara had their hands full dealing with the Mumbai attacks.  In the 39th minute Utsav Pradhan killed the game as a contest by scoring Mumbai’s third goal which seemed to have knocked the stuffing out of the young Satara side.

Two minutes later Cornius Rodricks made it 4-0 forMumbai before Utsav Pradhan once again popped up with a goal five minutes later as Mumbai were on course to make a real statement.

Ridge D’Mello then got on the score sheet in the 51st minute to score Mumbai’s sixth goal. Mumbai rounded off their scoring with two quick fire goals from Josho D’Souza and Atharva Shinde to make it a final score of 8-0 in Mumbai’s favour.

In another Quarter Final encounter, Nagpur dished out a dominant first half display to down Jalna 3-1.

Nagpur were quick out of the blocks against Jalna and the Central Maharashtrians found it tough to counter the waves of Nagpur attacks. Nagpur got their breakthrough in the 11th minute from the boots of Mohammed Abrar. Abrar was looking in great touch and bagged Nagpur’s second of the game six minutes later.

It was one-way traffic in the first half, but Nagpur failed to add to their tally but held their two goal advantage at the break.

Nagpur scored their third goal through Anas Ansari almost immediately after kick off and dash Jalna’s hopes. But the men in maroon fought back and gave themselves hope when Prashik Shinde pulled a goal back for Jalna in the 47th minute.

The goal lifted Jalna who started threatening the Nagpur goal more often in the last few minutes, but didn’t have the time to affect the result as a jaded Nagpur outfit at the end of the game held on for a 3-1 win.

Nagpur will now face free scoring Mumbai in the first semi-finals on Tuesday morning as the Maharashtra Inter District Football Championship nears its conclusion.