Miguel Angel Portugal’s Pune City managed to earn a hard-fought 1-1 draw at the death against home side Delhi Dynamos in their Hero Indian Super League opener here on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Delhi seemed set for all three points after a wonderful long-range strike from Rana Gharami but for second-half substitute Diego Carlos who equalised with two minutes left on the clock.<\/p>\n
Coach Josep Gombau had Delhi Dynamos line up in a 4-2-3-1 formation with Andrija Kaluderovic leading the lines. Former Pune City midfielder Marcos Tebar started in midfield with Bikramjit Singh while Nandhakumar and Lallianzuala Chhangte provided the width.<\/p>\n
Pune City, playing a 4-3-3 formation, started brightly, with Ashique Kuruniyan finding a lot of space down the left flank. An early cross from the youngster almost found Emiliano Alfaro inside the box.<\/p>\n
Just after a quarter of an hour, Delhi started to assert themselves and fashioned several key chances. With a minute to go for the half-time whistle, Delhi Dynamos got a deserved lead through an outrageous strike from Rana Gharami. The defender got on the ball from about 40 yards out and hit a thunderous strike that flew into the top corner, much to everyone’s wonder.<\/p>\n
The second half got off to a slow start as both teams failed to create chances of note. Emiliano Alfaro cut a lone figure up front for Pune City while Delhi Dynamos pressed well but could not trouble the Stallions’ defence.<\/p>\n
The Dynamos continued to exploit the wings and should have doubled their lead in the 67th minute. Nandhakumar went on a brilliant run down the right wings and squared the ball for Kaluderovic who met it with a weak left-foot that saw the effort trickle well wide.<\/p>\n
Portugal threw on Diego Carlos as he searched for an equaliser while Gombau sent on Romeo Fernandes for Nandhakumar. It was the latter who would fashion a chance as he galloped down the right wing and almost found Kaluderovic inside the box, but for an alert Mills.<\/p>\n
The Stallions did get a chance though as a hopeful cross from the left fell to Jonathan Vila on the edge of the area. The Spaniard’s fierce volley drew a fantastic reaction save from Francisco Dorronsoro.<\/p>\n
With Pune turning desperate for a goal, Delhi had two good chances to score a second. First, Ganni Zuiverloon failed to direct a volley at the back post from Das’ freekick on target. Then a smart interplay between Kaluderovic and Chhangte set the latter through on goal but he shot straight at Vishal Kaith.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Miguel Angel Portugal’s Pune City managed to earn a hard-fought 1-1 draw at the death against home side Delhi Dynamos in their Hero Indian Super League opener here on Wednesday. Delhi seemed set for all three points after a wonderful long-range strike from Rana Gharami but for second-half substitute Diego Carlos who equalised with two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43604,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43603"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43605,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43603\/revisions\/43605"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}