Austin Bengal Tigers
Austin Cougars
Last moment magic, points even-steven!
It was a classic battle between Austin Cougars and Austin Bengal Tigers; the teams that built the squad with interesting strategies. Both teams started off well and tried to control the midfield. Tigers had built several good attacks with good passes between Ishtiaque and Moinul. But Cougar’s defensive line led by Oli defended like a wall. Cougars mostly relied on long passes from Oli, that often landed at the feet of Polin and Mridul. Tigers caged Mridul with three defenders all the time trying to neutralize Cougar’s weapon. The first half was hanging in balance and ended at 0-0.
At the beginning of the second half, suddenly the game stopped amid a chaos out of a misunderstanding. One of the teams, Tigers had 13 players on the pitch instead of 12. Play was halted to make the adjustment. In the second half, Cougars attacked more as they brought up the midfield slightly. At one-point, young turk Ayman from Austin Tigers was down with hamstring injury, which forced him out of the pitch. After the game resumed, Mridul received a long ball from the defense on the right side, he dribbled past one of the defenders, and floated a cross in the D-box. Un-marked Zia had no problem heading the ball back of the net; 1-0 for Austin Cougars!
Conceding a goal, Tigers became desperate for an equalizer and started playing all out. It opened up the game more. Cougar’s Mukit and Mridul played couple of beautiful passes and created good chances. Veteran Mir bhai missed couple of chances, that he wouldn’t have missed 5 years ago. Another Veteran, Captain Polin had a chance to feed a ball to Mridul who was completely unmarked on the right-side, but he took too long to release the ball.
Tiger’s Veteran Deeder tried to play Maradona couple of times, but Cougars defensive-mid reminded him, his golden time is past. Ishtiaque and Moinul from the Tigers tried their best to capitalize the long balls from Captain Mona. But somehow, they could not penetrate the resolute defense of Cougars.
When Cougars were counting the last two minutes by every second, Cougars defense made a blunder feeding the ball to Rizwan who is known for his abilities from dead-ball situations. Rizwan, cool as cucumber, took his time, and took on Munir (arguably the best keeper of the tournament) with a Hail Mary long shot. Munir was standing way in front of the goal post, misjudged the flight and it was a goal, 1-1!
Right after the game, Manager Rashed and Captain Mona had a wide smile on their face and rightfully so! Their top pick, Rizwan just won the game for them!