Vedant Sawant's maiden goal powers Don Bosco (Matunga) into final

Don Bosco and St Stanislaus began the match aggressively with the Matunga side holding the edge, only marginally though

Vedant Sawant scored his first goal of the tournament to hand Don Bosco (Matunga) a ticket to the final of the Mumbai Schools Sports Association (MSSA)-organised U-16 boys Div-I football tournament with a 1-0 win over St Stanislaus at Cooperage yesterday.

Both teams began the match aggressively with the Matunga side holding the edge, only marginally though. After the goalless first half however, the Bandra side regrouped and created a few goal-scoring opportunities.

Five minutes after the break, Varad Parab nearly scored with a diving header after he got to the end of a free-kick by Mevrick Anthony. But the ball narrowly missed the target. Thereafter, the Stanislaus lads were awarded three more free-kicks but failed to capitalise.

Then, in the 47th minute, Vedant found himself in front of the Scottish goal, but shot wide. Fortunately for him though, he got another chance to score a minute later, and this time, he perfectly placed the ball into the net to give Don Bosco the lead. Don Bosco coach Leslie Machado was not happy despite the win. "Our boys didn't play well today. But they may have been a bit tired having played back-to-back matches in the last two days. Yesterday [Tuesday] we finished one of our U-17 District Sports Office-organsied matches at 6pm at the Naigaon Police Ground in Parel. And the day before, we had two matches — one MSSA game and one DSO game," he said. Stanislaus coach Roy Fernandes felt luck didn't favour his team.

Don Bosco will play Bombay Scottish (Mahim) in the final on Monday. Scottish beat Cathedral and John Connon 6-5 via the tie-breaker after a goalless encounter. In the shootout, Ayaan Mishra, Jadon Collins, Sudhanshu Naik, Dhruv Dhingra, Rushaad Engineer and Jash Bhansali were on target for the Mahim team, while only Jaden Irani, Veer Subandh, Agrim Solanki, Abhibhav Dujodwala and Kaustubh Mathur scored for Cathedral.

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