It all came together on one glorious night: Here's how FC Goa dismantled Mumbai 7-0 in ISL's 100th match

Goa: For the first 30 minutes, it seemed that this would be a match settled by one special strike. Both Mumbai City and FC Goa created an equal number of half-chances and nearly moments – Nicolas Anelka, Sunil Chhetri and Frederic Piquionne were combining well up front and Goa’s playmaker Leo Moura was carving up Mumbais’s defence with some incisive passing.

And then, Thongkhosiem Haokip scored, incidentally the 100th goal of this ISL season. It was the third time he was at the end of a rebound – his first two attempts were flashed high and wide. And just eight minutes after breaking the deadlock, Goa were 2-0 up. This time it was Dudu Omagbeni, who collected Moura’s pass, turned to leave his marker Lalchhuanmawia Fanai reeling and scored at the near post.

Goa came all guns blazing in the second half and smashed five more past the hapless Subrata Paul.

As Zico later said, it all came together for his team on the night: “Sometimes you train hard and nothing works, and sometimes everything works,” the Brazilian said.

Here are three things Goa got right as they marked the Indian Super League’s 100th match in style:

Scored the easy goals: “I told my team to score the easy goals. I saw Romeo (Fernandes) get the ball once and he blazed it over, so I told my attackers: be calm, compose yourself and then take a shot. You saw Reinaldo’s last goal, where he could have taken a first time shot but controlled the ball and picked his spot,” Zico said when he was asked about his team finally finding the goals.

Out of the seven goals, four came from rebounds. Goa’s strikers were in the right place at the right time, and they were lethal in capitalising on every mistake Mumbai’s defence made. That Zico made a conscious attempt to calm his strikers down after seeing them squander a few chances in the first half hour, and that they responded magnificently, just makes it better.

Wing-play: When you’ve got the Goan duo of Romeo and Mandar Dessai in your team, and you allow them to go forward and show their explosive talent, this is the sort of result you get. Both the wingers, the former on the right and the latter on the left, tormented Mumbai’s defenders with their pace, trickery and crossing. There were stepovers and dinks and feints and shoulders being dropped expertly.

The final goal came as Romeo collected the ball near the halfway line, gathered some pace, beat a man, surged forward and took a low shot which later made its way to Reinaldo. Both players tracked back pretty impressively as well. This was a match won on the wings.

Risky tactics: Zico went with a 3-5-2, with two natural wingers to support the defence and three midfielders who love pushing into the final third. Romeo, Mandar, Joffre Mateu, Jonatan Lucca and Leo Moura are all known for their ability going forward – and that left centre-backs Gregory Arnolin, Raju Gaikwad and Lucio exposed at times.

If Mumbai had exploited their early chances and the space on the wings, this could have been a different story. But Zico had other plans: “We saw Chhetri getting a lot of space on the right to tweaked a few things at the break to stop that.”

Anelka played a left-back at left-wing, and both times he got forward, he couldn’t make it count. It just goes to show that if you’re going to gamble in tactics or selection, you need to have a fearless plan.