Kerala Blasters and Atletico de Kolkata played out a 1-1 draw at the Rabindra Sarobar stadium on Tuesday, which was enough for the hosts to register their place in the last four of the Indian Super League for a third straight time. This also means that the Delhi Dynamos progress to the next stage as well.
CK Vineeth continued his rich vein of form and capitalised on some lax defending from ATK to put his side in the lead inside 10 minutes. ATK equalised through with Stephen Pearson finishing off an exquisite move in the first half.
The energy and tempo of the game fizzled out as the match progressed. Neither side created clear-cut opportunities in a poor second half. The draw also meant that defending champions Chennaiyin FC and FC Pune City’s quest for a semi-final spot drew to a close as both sides have 15 points with one game in hand each while fourth-placed Kerala have 19 with a game to go against fifth-placed NorthEast United.
Should NorthEast fail to beat Delhi Dynamos tomorrow, Kerala will clinch the remaining playoff spot. In case of a NorthEast win, Steve Coppell’s men will have to ensure that they avoid defeat in their last group match.
Blasters got off to a dream start when their golden boy, Vineeth headed a lose ball into the net as ATK failed to clear the ball from a goalmouth scramble. Debjit Majumder had invited trouble by flapping at the ball, which bounced kindly to the Blasters winger.
The inaugural winners bounced back through the best team goal scored in the tournament so far courtesy of some outstanding one-touch passing from Iain Hume and Helder Postiga. The Portuguese set up the onrushing Pearson with a terrific pass and the scores were level.
The Blasters were smarting from conceding the goal and looked more threatening going forward, especially towards the end of the first half, when Majumder was called into action through a long-range attempt from Kervens Belfort. There were half-chances for Mehtab Hossain and Elhadji Ndoye too but their attempts failed to hit the target.
ATK came out strongly in the second half but couldn’t make their possession count as the Blasters backline was well marshalled by Sandesh Jhingan. Fatigue caught up with both sides, who failed to enough to push for a winner.
Brief score:
Atletico de Kolkata 1 (Stephen Pearson) draw with Kerala Blasters 1 (CK Vineeth)
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