Injury-hit, young Delhi put up fight before going down in Santosh Trophy

Delhi exited the Santosh Trophy National Football Championship after a heart-breaking 5-2 loss in extra time to Manipur in their quarterfinal in Hyderabad. The two teams were locked 2-2 at the end of regulation time.

Manipur then fired in three goals in the extra time to enter the semi-finals.

Delhi had taken an early lead through Jaideep Singh in the ninth minute and held the one-goal lead for the entire first half. Manipur then equalised in the 49th minute before taking lead in the 50th minute. Jaideep, however, equalised in the 65th minute.

Coach Vikrant Sharma said he was pleased with the team’s performance.  

“The way the boys played I am very happy. They played very, very well.”

He, however, said that the team was robbed of a penalty and with some luck, things could have gone in their favour.

“We were robbed of a penalty, their goalkeeper hit our striker. These things if they go in our favour, we win. We conceded a self-goal. Missed so many chances. They were a mature team. Our boys don’t have the kind of maturity they have as the average age of our team is 20 at the most. Experience matters a lot. We also don’t play as much as players from teams like Manipur,” he added.

The team also suffered on other counts. They had to face injury concerns.

“Plenty of our players were injured. In the quarterfinal, besides the goalkeeper, we had only five fit players, and two of them were defenders. Two wingers –  Rishabh Dobriyal and Shikhar – hadn’t recovered, so we couldn’t rotate players. It was not an easy job.”

The team also missed Milind who was given red card in the last group stage game.

Delhi were one of the four teams put up in the Telangana Police Academy where they had a tough time staying during the final round of group games and the quarterfinal.

“There were some tough rules. We needed permissions for everything. We required permission to bring in drum for ice bath, couldn’t move out after 9, couldn’t even move in shorts,” said coach Sharma.

This was the second sucessive year that Delhi made the quarters. 

Services, Kerala and West Bengal joined Manipur in the semifinals. 

Tags : Santosh Trophy, Delhi football, Jaideep Singh, Manipur, Services, Kerala, West Bengal