Striker Ranty Martins's brace helped Federation Cup winners Dempo, Goa, beat Mumbai's Mahindra United 2-1 in the ONGC Cup ninth National Football League at the Cooperage in Mumbai on Monday.
It was Dempo's third straight victory in as many matches in the league.
Mahindra United drew first blood in the 15th minute when their Brazilian import Flavio Rodrigues, who became a hero and then a villain within 90 minutes, lobbed the ball over an advancing Dempo custodian Satish Kumar off skipper S Venkatesh's fine forward pass.
Martins, who had scored in the previous match against State Bank of Travancore, then equalised in the 30th minute when he turned swiftly and scored from medio Melwin Rodrigues's cross, with none of the Mahindra defenders even attempting to clear the ball.
In the 60th minute, Dempo were awarded a penalty after Martins was brought down on top of the box. Martins himself took the spot-kick and scored to put his team ahead for the first time in the match.
Following a counter attack, five minutes later, the home team too forced a penalty when Rodrigues was brought down inside the box. However, Rodrigues shot wide and was booed by the Mahindra supporters for the rest of the match.
Though Mahindra United scored first it was Dempo who made most of the attacking moves. In the 20th minute their winger Johny D'Cruz missed a golden chance to restore parity to Mahindra's goal following an R C Prakash's pass.
Three minutes later Mahindra winger Abhishek Yadav failed to connect a Steve Dias cross before Martins got the equalizer and the teams went in for the break on equal terms.
After half-time, Flavio Rodrigues had very good chance to score after he managed to snatch the ball from Dempo defender Valeriano Rebello but an advancing Satish Kumar made a very good sliding save.
Soon after Dempo medio Jose Colaco's pile driver just went over and then Prakash failed score with just Mahindra custodian Sandip Nandy to beat.
Dempo got a golden chance to increase their lead at the fag end of the game but Nandy effected a very good save when Colaco tried to score off a cross from Prakash and Mahindra defender Arun Malhotra made a timely clearance.
Mahindra play their next match at the Cooperage against another Goan outfit, Sporting Clube de Goa on January 29.
