ATK taste maiden victory over Bengaluru to go atop
KOLKATA: ATK beat defending champions Bengaluru FC (BFC) for the first time in five attempts in the Indian Super League (ISL) spread over three seasons here on Wednesday.
Australian David Williams scored the match’s only goal in the 47th minute.
With 18 points from 10 rounds, ATK moved top but FC Goa, who have 18 points from nine games, can dislodge them in Chennai on Thursday. BFC stay on 16 from 10 and are third.
By the time BFC switched positions for Rahul Bheke and Juanan in the three-man central defence, Williams had done the damage. Bheke had a string of poor touches and mispasses in the first 30 minutes.
The India defender had recovered then but when Rane pressured him in the 47th minute, Bheke couldn’t retrieve. Rane found Williams and the Australian banged in his fifth goal of the season with a shot so powerful that before Gurpreet Singh Sandhu could fling his 1.98m frame to the left, the ball had passed the India goalkeeper.
“It was a good finish,” said BFC striker Sunil Chhetri.
“It was the kind of game where the team which scores first would win. We lost to the skill of one player. The strikers of ATK (Williams and Roy Krishna) are doing very well. They had played three days ago so we knew they would attack us in the first 10 minutes of the second half. We spoke at half-time about it,” said BFC coach Carles Cuadrat.
That Arindam Bhattacharja in ATK goal wasn’t really called into action till the fifth minute of second-half stoppage time was proof of the kind of shift ATK’S outfield players put in to subdue a team that has the skill of Chhetri, the pace of Udanta Singh and big men in Eric Paartalu, Albert Serran, Juanan to exploit set-piece situations. “The team was the Santa Claus tonight. I am very happy with the attitude. We are a new team, we need time to be consistent but to beat a team as difficult as Bengaluru is good,” said ATK coach Antonio Habas who said this was the first time he played a game on December 25.