Clash of States: Do-Or-Die Situation: North Vs South

by Jobel Varghese March 27, 2018

Punjab put up an outstanding show in what appeared to be a Do-Or-Die match where the north side defenders held their ground strong and were able to prohibit the positive attacks from the Karnataka side. The captain for team Punjab Sarbjit Singh seemed to be the key player in the back, motivating his players and continued attacking from the back with his long balls. Punjab tried to keep the ball mostly on the opposition’s side by means of clearances and long balls to avoid all possible risks from the South side. On having a word with the high spirited Team Manager of Punjab Mr.Naresh Bedi, he was of the opinion that he had confidence in his players and knew positivity could do wonders for his team. An active coach from the Punjab Police team Mr.Bedi was not disappointed after the first penalty and believed that his boys could equalize with a counter-attack with their unique style of football. The Punjab Police has contributed seven players for the state’s Santosh Trophy Team, with likes of players including Captain Sarbjit Singh, Parmjit Singh, Gurtej Singh, Amandeep Singh, Kamalpreet Singh, Jadgeep Singh and Karan Atwal. The Punjab Police team had been consistently dominating the Punjab Football League beating Minerva Punjab by two goals in their last match. They will be facing Goa in their final match of the group stage matches  who thrashed Odisha with a double hat trick in their last game. Punjab’s physical build and technical assessment of the game will be put to test against the fast moving Goan side on 28th March,2017.

On the other side we had a chat with Mr.Murali Dharan P ,the coach of the Karnataka team who seemed quite motivated even after losing the match against the northern side. Team Manager Mr.Kumar M was positive about their next game against Mizoram and was of the opinion that it was a pressure on them to qualify and not on the north eastern side as they made their cut in to the semi finals. Mr.Murali Dharan was not disappointed with his team’s performance as he believes that  luck also played a major role in that game. Karnataka had a number of golden opportunities at the goal which was either missing the goal by inches or was being  cleared by the Punjab defense. There was a little disappointment in the coach’s mind caused by defender Shafeel PP who’s performance was not up to the mark and also because of referee’s decision of adding  eight extra minutes after full time  as compared to the fifteen minutes thought by him.  The South coach was of the opinion that the level of competition in Santosh Trophy was deteriorating because of the compulsory rule of having five under-21 players in the entire squad  giving more stress and focus on youngsters lacking the essence of experienced players. The food did not seem to be of much trouble as compared to problems faced by the Kerala side .Team Manager Mr.Kumar M said, ”We need to adjust to the food, not let food adjust according to us” as the ingredients were the same, just with a difference in the style of cooking . The Karnataka team surely mean some serious business here in this tournament. The coach commended the Punjab’s physical built  of players and believes that their next game against Mizoram on 28th March  is a  Do-Or-Die match for them where they are positive about a success, after a hard clash with the north side.