ISL: Subrata's battle against Junker crucial to Mumbai's victory over Delhi

Mumbai: Delhi Dynamos had a plan — flood the Mumbai City FC box with crosses — early, from the byline, from deep. Only two of their 20-odd crosses reached their mark — the first a Mads Junker chance which the Danish striker headed over, and the second… Alessandro del Piero’s point-blank header that somehow managed to miss it’s mark. The rest of the crosses, Subrata Paul dealt with brilliantly. Delhi’s plan failed and Mumbai held them off to win 1-0. Delhi’s tactics so far have been pretty basic — they have two poachers in Junker and Morten Skoubo and they try and get them the ball as quickly as possible — inside the box. With their combative midfielder Hans Mulder missing the game, Delhi needed to win the battle in the box. And there they faced an in-form Subrata, who stopped everything they threw at him. [caption id=“attachment_1789817” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Subrata Paul was brilliant against Delhi Dynamos. ISL[/caption] “The plan was to trouble them with crosses but he anticipated them all very well. It’s rare that a keeper holds on to every ball which comes into the box. Sometimes there are leftovers, the second ball — but there were none today,” Junker said after the match. In fact he had lost the psychological battle inside the danger area. Subrata came out and stopped the first two crosses which came from the right from Steven Dias. The third header cross was the one Junker miscued and sent over. Subrata won all the other crosses in the rest of the match before the one in which Del Piero stole ahead of him, only to glance is rather than make proper contact. The chance had gone. “I maintain that we deserved to win, but we got lucky when Del Piero missed that header. If that had gone in, we would have paid the penalty for not killing off the match after the number of breaks we had,” Mumbai City manager Peter Reid said. Junker himself admitted that he could have done better. It was evident that every time Subrata held onto another stinging delivery, he looked less inclined to go all in. “I could have anticipated a couple of crosses better. He had a better game unfortunately,” said Junker, who already has two goals to his name in the ISL. Belgian coach Harm Van Veldhoven also rued the number of chances his team missed: “That performance deserved a 1-1. It is these close losses, these points dropped that make the difference in the end.” However, he dismissed the notion that had Del Piero started or come on earlier, then things would have been different: “Football is not simple. By that logic, we had him on the pitch and still lost the previous game (vs FC Goa) — so is it his fault we lost? There is pressure to keep a star on the bench, but you have to take care of every player and keep their bodies fit. And everybody needs to be given minutes. I see my team work and I want to play all 26, but I can play only 11.” He did say that Del Piero may play from the off in the next match, but until then, Delhi Dynamos will need to quickly lick their wounds and stop their losing run. The team next face Kerala Blasters in Kochi.