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HAL Bangalore, who are languishing at the bottom of the table with
just one point from 12 matches will host Sporting Clube de Goa in the 13th round of the I League Championship at the Bangalore Football Stadium on Wednesday.
For the hosts, the script has been always perfect till the first half – they put up a brilliant show, and dominate proceedings. Come second half, they concede an early goal, and everything goes haywire. From the close quarters, it is nothing but a known chronic illness!
While Sporting Clube de Goa has had a wonderful start of the tournament and remained unbeaten till sixth round, but in the last six rounds their seems to be a sudden slump in their performance, garnering just one point from six outing, including the 12th round 5-goal humiliation by the hands of Dempo SC.
HAL Bangalore’s manager Muralidharan seems to be aware of his opponents descend. In his cautious approach, he too is looking for a win, “We’ve to get it straight this time, we will be playing in 4-4-2 combination,” he quipped.
HAL defence will be bolstered by Rohit Chand, who would make a comeback. He will be filling the Asian player quota that was left vacant till now. However, defender Femi Joseph Adeola, who is yet to recover from his injury and looks to be doubtful starter for tomorrow’s campaign.
On the other hand Sporting Clube would also like to turn the table on, and why not as they have an ideal opponent in HAL, who could only manage a draw in 12 rounds of the Championship played so far.
Sporting are at 11th position with 13 points from 12 matches, while HAL is at 14th position with just a single point from 12 matches.
Match is slated for 3 pm tomorrow, January 4, 2012.
