Mumbai: From changing formations to Sunil Chhetri's disappointing night, here are five takeaways from Atletico de Kolkata's spirited performance in the second leg of the ISL 2016 semifinals.
The battle of the fans
The Mumbai Football Arena is located at a very central location in Mumbai, and tends to fill up a little later than most other ISL venues. This being a working day, there was an expected late build-up of the fans. In the end, it was just a little shy of the 8,000 capacity, but the ones in there were noisy, witty and quite evenly balanced. This is not new to Mumbai, because in the past the Cooperage football ground would always attract droves of fans of Kolkata clubs such as Mohun Bagan, East Bengal and even Mohammedan Sporting. On Tuesday night, the splattering of colours, whistles, flags and the traditional Nasik dhol in these parts made for a terrific evening.
The two titans
Even when the teams were warming up, it was pretty evident who the two big crowd favourites are for these two teams. If the Mumbai City FC fans had a consistent "Goian, Goian" chant going, the Atletico de Kolkata fans went in for a slightly more melodious and varied rendition of "Borja, Borja, Borja, Borja." This consistency often even spilled over to the pitch, where Lucian Goian and Borja Fernandez were by far the most influential players, often both in attack and defence. Goian would often move forward to join the attack even in the first half, and was thrown right up forward as a striker in the last ten minutes of the game. He even got at the end of a couple of balls, but his lack of experience in attack saw him scuffing up his chances.
Borja was his usual calm self, dropping deep often to clear up whenever Mumbai were looking threatening, and then putting in some sublime balls up ahead, including a sumptuous cross-field ball that found substitute Lalrindika Ralte in a lot of space. Borja has an incredible fitness level to go with his tactical understanding of the game, and expect him to have a major influence in the final, irrespective of the result.
The tragic hero
If there was one player who was expected to rise to the occasion for Mumbai in the absence of marquee player Diego Forlan, it was Chhetri. Tuesday's game was not his best. It is understood that he has not been a hundred percent since his return from AFC Cup duty with Bengaluru FC. He spent the majority of the match unsure of how best to utilise his skills. The worst part of his evening were two regulation misses - one in the 89th minute when Debjit Majumder's clearance fell to him and with the goal at his mercy, he headed way over the cross bar.
The bigger blunder was in the 7th minute, when a ball fell for him favourably and he took one touch too many trying to cut to the outside of Majumder. He chose to shoot low to the near corner of the Atletico keeper, who effected a good save, and possibly altered the potential course of the evening. Chhetri has now gone without scoring in the ISL since December 4, 2015, when he scored Mumbai City's second goal in a 3-2 win away to Atletico de Kolkata, which was also their first ever away-win in ISL history.
The goalkeepers
Amrinder Singh went top of the tree in terms of clean sheets, with his fifth one coming from just his sixth game this season. This could mean he stays on top even at the end of the final, unless either one of Kerala's Sandip Nandy and Delhi's Antonio Doblas start and keep clean sheets in their next game and the final. On the other hand, Debjit Majumder let in no goal for only the third match this season. Amrinder seemed the busier of the two goalkeepers late in the first half, when Atletico de Kolkata appeared to find some fluency going forward, especially with Abhinas Ruidas down the left flank. The second half was all Mumbai City, though, following the sending off of Atletico's Robert Lalthlamuana.
Incidentally, both players had experienced contrasting seasons for the teams they played against tonight. While Amrinder Singh was a star performer for Atletico de Kolkata, and could only watch helplessly as Fikru Tefera Lemassa took advantage of his mistake to score what would prove to be Chennaiyin's fourth goal on aggregate in the semis to end Kolkata's sojourn, Debjit hardly got any starts for Mumbai as their campaign fell away after much early promise.
The move that set tongues wagging
Much of the chatter before, during and after the game was centred on Atletico de Kolkata's decision to make nine changes from the first leg. Some were wondering if head coach Jose Molina was protecting some of his players from potential suspensions from the final. However, Abhinas Ruidas and Lalrindika Ralte were the only ones who had yellow cards in Kolkata. On the other hand, Mumbai's Alexandre Guimaraes made a lot of strategic changes right through the game. He began with a 4-1-4-1, which switched into a 4-2-3-1 to cancel out the Kolkata formation as the visitors began taking the upper hand in midfield. When Robert was sent off, Mumbai reorganised themselves to a 4-3-3, with Sony Norde operating as a striker and Chhetri and Matias Defederico playing alongside him. Even his changes were positive, with Jackichand Singh, Thiago Cunha and Cafu all put in with a view to increase scoring options.
Was it a lack of fortune? Was it just a bad day at the office? Or was the Kolkata strategy played out to perfection by a very gifted set of players? In the end, as Molina would say in the post-match conference, "Mumbai didn't have enough resources to beat our defences."