Chennai City FC started their campaign in the Hero I league 2019-20 with a winning note as they sailed over debutants TRAU FC from Manipur by 1-0 in the 13th season Hero I League clash at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium here on Sunday.
Coimbatore: Chennai City FC started their campaign in the Hero I league 2019-20 with a winning note as they sailed over debutants TRAU FC from Manipur by 1-0 in the 13th season Hero I League clash at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium here on Sunday.
Coimbatore-based Chennai City Football Club with a new formation begun their title defence as they played against the newly promoted TRAU FC from Manipur.
The first half from both the champions went little slow as they missed a couple of chances in the first half. Chennai City FC as usual pushed at early but were well blocked by the defenders. Debutants looked very cool and played their game.
The very first chance was created by TRAU but it was very well defended by experienced CCFC. At the 10th minute of the game, CCFC missed a chance when Manzi's header went over the nets.
Chennai player fails to beat Gurpreet Singh, it was a corner from Katsumi Yusa (Japanese) targeted the far post. At the 30th minute, it was very unlucky for the champions as the header from Manzi hit the top bar and cleared by TRAU.
A couple of chances were created by CCFC but all went in vain as the visitors held everything that Chennai struck. And at the end of the first half of the opener, CCFC's Skipper Manzi and Katsumi Yusa played a vital role and for the visitors, it was Abednedo Kofi Teetteh who played a notable role in the first half.
As expected, Chennai City FC started their second half positively, and just a few minutes into the second half, it was Adolfo Miranda Araujo who delivered it for Chennai City FC to take the lead 1-0.
After few minutes of the first goal, Katsumi Yusa's pass found Mashoor Shereef Thangalakath very close to the post but he completely missed the target as his header went outside the sidebar.
Few more chances created by the champions were not capitalised by the team to extend the lead. The visitors gave up the tough fight to the champions as they could not take control of the game. CCFC sealed TRAU FC by 1-0 to start off the season with a victory.
Adolfo Miranda Araujo was selected as the Hero of the match for his brilliant performance as an opener.
"Though we have won this game, I'm not very happy with the team's performance as we should have scored a couple of goals, at least. We missed a couple of chances in this game and the happy part is that the players replicated their training session in this match. Presentation could have been better and we will work hard to do better in future games", said Akbar Nawas, Head coach CCFC.