Two months ago, FC Pune City introduced Tuncay Sanli to Indian football in the side’s Hero-ISL season-II match against Mumbai City FC at the Balewadi Sports Complex here. The ponytailed Turk, an attacking mid-fielder, headed home two goals in the home team’s 3-1 victory then.
FC Pune City showed much promise, but it is with nothing at stake but a moral duty towards its supporters that David Platt’s team takes on Chennaiyin FC in its last league engagement here on Saturday. Pune has been eliminated ahead of the business end of the competition.
Frankly, Pune could not have expected to appear in the semifinal play-offs; it has not won a match since October 27 when it beat Kerala Blasters in its fifth match at home.
Battered and bruised, it was obligatory for Pune to beat North East United FC in the away match and Chennaiyin FC in the last home match, but NEU, sort of, ambushed it 3-2 at Guwahati on Wednesday, and as a consequence, the side’s chances of making the knock-out stage vanished into thin air.
The die is now cast as far as play-offs are concerned, but Pune can still play spoilsport by getting the better of the visitors, facilitating NEU FC’s passage into the last four.
Chennaiyin has been on a winning streak: it beat ATK 2-1, Kerala Blasters 4-1, Delhi Dynamos 4-0 and Mumbai FC 3-0, over the last 14 days. All Marco Materazzi’s team needs is a draw to enter the play-offs on superior goal average.
“I want to thank my boys for creating this unique opportunity for us,” said Materazzi. “Because, 14 days ago, we were last in the table and now we have a chance to qualify for the semifinals. The thing in this tournament is, if you lose two games you are last, but if you win three, you are amongst the semifinalists.”
“In any case, I respect FC Pune City as a team, and they’ve shown that they still have whatever it takes to contribute towards Indian football.”
Asked about the team’s recent successes, Materazzi said: “It’s all about the players. They had the intelligence to put into practice whatever I told them. I told them they had the technical skills to win over their opponents, and all that was needed was to play as a team. I think we’re here because of the intelligence of my players.”
Platt said his team would approach the match as professionals. “Everyone has a bad patch, nobody runs away with it. Unfortunately our bad patch lasted longer than anyone else’s. That’s what you get when you don’t win seven games. You don’t qualify because that’s half the season,” he said.