Kerala Blasters FC: Nandy, Jhingan, Hengbart, Gurwinder, McAllister, Mehtab, Pulga, Pearson, Gusmao, Milagres and Hume
FC Pune City: Arindam; Wadoo, Cirillo, Ravanan, Kotal; Saidou, Vadocz, Kostas, Manish; Pennant, Dudu
Blasters ensure their top four qualification as Iain Hume’s sublime freekick settles the tie in Kochi. Pune’s dream of a top four finish went down the drain with this excruciating defeat.
The match up was always between Pune’s adventurous streaks against Blasters’ tactical soundness. And Blasters came up with the trumps as they earned a hard fought win in an end to end match. Both the teams started the game with bit of caution and soon it looked like it is going to be a long night for both the goal keepers.
Finally the hosts managed a breakthrough with a brilliant freekick from their Canadian talisman Iain Hume. He curled the ball round the wall to beat Pune’s Arindam Bhattacharya, who made a hash of a free-kick from a benign position with wrong placing of the wall and also with his own positioning during the kick. Still nothing to be taken away from this super effort from Hume.
Pune tried to get back into the game and Bruno Cirillo came agonisingly close as he ballooned his shot over the bar from six yards out. This was the story for the rest of the game as both teams failed to convert their chances.
Sandip Nandy’s heroics meant that Blasters stayed third in the table with final round of games coming to a close for them.
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