90' Jayesh Rane runs at the goal, before taking a moment, looking up, and sliding in Lallianzuala Chhangte with a peach of a through ball, perfectly weighted. A touch to take it past Dheeraj Singh and Chhangte has an empty goal to clip the ball into. The bounce that had filled the Fatorda for 90 mins previously has now been replaced by nervous murmurs. The score reads FC Goa 2 - Mumbai City 1
91' Gurkirat Singh races into the box down the inside right channel. Single-minded, head down, he bullies past two before smacking a shot at the far post. Dheeraj saves, but can only parry it out to Vikram Pratap Singh who taps it in from four yards. The palpable nervousness in the Fatorda air has now been replaced by pure shock. The score? 2-2.
96' Rane goes on another run. He's had everyone on toast for the last six minutes and he has them backpedaling furiously. At the edge of the box, he takes a shot, but it's half-blocked and completely mistimed: so much so that it bobbles out to Chhangte inside the box. A touch to kill the wildly spinning ball dead, and another to lash it into the far corner. Chhangte has two. Mumbai have three. The Fatorda is enveloped by the sound of silence. On the field, bedlam in the sky-blue corner. The score reads 2-3.
The moment when @lzchhangte7 silenced the #Fatorda �� #FCGMCFC #ISL #ISL10 #LetsFootball #ISLPlayoffs #MumbaiCityFC #LallianzualaChhangte pic.twitter.com/d7oI9JcMDp
- Indian Super League (@IndSuperLeague) April 24, 2024
Six minutes, three goals and a match that had been all FC Goa's had been completely turned on its head. And when I say all FC Goa's it had really been just that: apart from a Rahul Bheke header (off a lovely Chhangte cross) that went wide from mid-way in the Goa box after a cleverly worked freekick routine, Mumbai City were locked down. Seriton Fernandes, Odei Oneindia, Nim Dorjee, Jay Gupta, Carl McHugh and Borja Herrera controlled their half with a degree of authority that shook their opponents. There was no space in midfield and nothing City did seemed to work.
At the other end Mohammed Yasir and Boris Singh combined for the latter to tap-in the opener and Brandon Fernandes unfurled one more from his glorious collection early in the second half to make it two. Both had come from mistakes in controlling the ball made by Mehtab Singh, but both had been thoroughly deserved on the balance of play.
The Fernandes goal, in particular, seemed to be the kind of exclamation point that this performance over the 90 had deserved. City, the much more in-form, higher-ranked team had been invited in only for the door to be slammed shut firmly in their face. In fact, Goa coach Manolo Marquez would call this arguably his team's best performance this season, and he was right. Till suddenly it wasn't.
As spectacular as the goals were from City, as superb as their never-say-die attitude was, the collapse at the back was even more so. "This is the reason we are not the champions [league shield winners] this season," Marquez would say. "We concede 3 in seven minutes in Kerala, 3 in ten in Punjab, 3 in six today..." Three in stoppage time at the end of a semifinal first leg, though... quite unprecedented. "The first time in my 30+ years as manager," he would say, before adding, "If you can't show character, you can't win."
Mumbai City showed plenty of that, though. At the time of scoring their goals, City's strike force was all Indian: Bipin Singh, Rane, Chhangte, Vikram and Gurkirat. Behind them, Apuia pulling the strings. They were exhilarating to watch, going at it as if they had nothing to lose in those final six minutes. City coach Petr Kratky's plan A -- big Jakub Vojtus up top, building play up with Yoell van Nieff and Thaer Krouma - had been smashed to pieces, but plan B was all-out attack, and that was good enough to blow Goa aside.
Chhangte, once the mercurial what-could-he-have-been rising star of Indian football, established himself as the most clutch player in the country with his calm in front of goal and deservedly won man of the match, but it was the unheralded substitutions -- Gurkirat and Rane, especially -- that had made the difference.
"We tried to bring energy," Kratky would say about the subs who he sent out with a succinct message: "keep going, keep going, keep going". Commenting on the fact that City ended the game with just one foreigner on the pitch, he said, "I believe in the Indian players, and you can see [why]. Before the game we'd said the bench would make a difference today... this was their chance, and they did it."
"This is what football is all about, no? When you see an opportunity, go and grab it."
Grab it they did, by the very scruff. Goa had already started dreaming of taking a two-goal advantage to Mumbai, now they have to go there a goal down.
Marquez, though, knows this is far from done and City would be wise to ward off complacency. "This, though, is one game of 180 minutes," he would say. "They were celebrating too much... let's see what happens in Mumbai."