By Sporting Clube de Goa Media

GOA: A super goal from Sahil Halarnkar in the early second half helped Sporting beat SAI in the U-15 Youth League match at Don Bosco Ground, Panjim.

The high tempo match saw Sporting put up a good fight to keep the SAI players at bay. The first half had an equally balanced game as both teams maintained possession and tried to curtail any slumps. Both teams displayed some creative football and maintained pressure at the other end for most of the first half.

The best opportunity for Sporting came towards the end of first half when Stendley Fernandes managed to create space for himself at the centre to set Desmond Fernandes with a long cross who saw his attempt go screaming past the nets.

TH London created a lot of chances for SAI as he used his physical dominance to get past the Sporting defenders, but a vigilant Sporting defense managed to keep him in check. Diogo Vaz and Alister Costa came up with some crucial tackles to deny the SAI forwards as they kept testing Akshat Gopal with long range shots.

The second half saw Sporting come all out at SAI to create intense pressure right from the kick off. The hard work paid off as a fantastic move created in the mid was carried forward by Aman Govekar at the left flank who managed to get a powerful shot off, the SAI goal keeper Piyush Rathod managed to get down in time to block the same but Sahil Halarnkar who had figured the picture smartly made a dash towards to ball to get there before Piyush and give the decisive lead to Sporting.

Post this SAI tried hard to pull one back but couldn’t crack the Sporting Defense. Most of the second half saw Sporting keep the possession and frustrate SAI players who couldn’t get better of the flaming oranje unit.