A typical Roy Krishna goal saw 10-man Odisha FC beat 10-man Mohun Bagan 2-1 in their semifinal first leg tie at the Kalinga stadium in Bhubaneswar.
Manvir Singh opened the scoring early on with one of the easiest goals of his career. Left unmarked by Mourtada Fall inside the Odisha six-yard box, he merely had to stand his ground and wait for Dimi Petratos' corner to reach him before nodding it past a rooted-to-the-line Amrinder SIngh. After this concession in the third minute, it appeared the intensity of this league-shield-winning Bagan side would sweep Odisha aside but soon they started fighting back.
After winning a series of corners consecutively, they scored off their fifth: Carlos Delgado left as unmarked as Manvir had been, and he jogged onto a delicious Ahmed Jahouh curler to touch it home from three yards out. The goalkeeper, this time Vishal Kaith,was once again rooted to the line.
It was an exhilarating, end-to-end start to the match that continued through the rest of the match. That lasted without troubling the scorers till Roy Krishna decided to do Roy Krishna things. Running onto a Amrinder kick, he cushioned a header onto his own path, outpaced and bullied Hector Yuste, and placed a delicate finish right in between Kaith's legs. In the 39th minute, Krishna had made it 2-1 with the kind of goal that the previous version of Antonio Habas had built his ISL empire on.
That was the end of the goalscoring action, but certainly not the end of the drama. Armando Sadiku got a second yellow for a silly foul in the 67th minute, lashing out at Ahmed Jahouh after the two had been engaged in a running verbal duel for a few minutes prior. This was soon followed by another silly second yellow, this time for Carlos Delgado, who deliberately handled the ball in an attempt to stop it being played into the box. They will both, of course, miss the next leg. The refereeing for this frantic, fraught game was superb - exemplified by moments like these and Roy Krishna seemingly winning a penalty before being called offside correctly in the first half.
There were chances aplenty for both sides despite both going down to ten, and as the two exhausted sides slugged it out misses were blatant too. Krishna mucked up a 3 v 2 which he created out of nothing with a wayward pass. Thapa saw a ball bounce off his thigh after an inadvertent deflection and bounce off the crossbar from two yards out. Kiyan Nassiri created all sorts of bother after coming on. Jahouh ended up playing centre-back and by the end was clearing, tackling or blocking almost every Bagan attack.
After the match, Habas would lament Odisha's long-ball strategy (the irony was not lost on anyone), while Lobera said that it showed the importance of having a team that knew the importance of suffering. Now the two Spaniards, all-time greats in the short history of the ISl, will duke it out in the second leg in five days time: on April 28 at the Salt Lake stadium.
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