Bhubaneswar 2 - 1 Nagaland (387183747)

12000 spectators had found their way to Deathtub Arena, despite the heavy rain. Ingolf Inauen was the appointed referee with assistance provided by Finn Stadlhofer and Vincenzo Hänggi. Bhubaneswar decided to use a 4-4-2 set up. The following players had been chosen: Velamore - McWilliam, Venkatesh, Singh, Pande - Chawla, Kapoor, Singh, Faruqui - Venkataraman, Chaudhary.

Nagaland started off with a 4-4-2 lineup. Lineup: Singh - Sarkar, Sur, Srivastava, Nagendra Gandhi - Nandini, Najeeb, Mehrotra, Hamill - Rugnat, Jagadish.

D. Srivastava behaved like an inexperienced youth player after 22 minutes as he gave the ball away to A. Chaudhary. Lucky for him though, there was no goal. A. Faruqui gave Bhubaneswar the lead as he successfully challenged the guests' central defenders, then slotted the ball into the bottom corner, giving the keeper no chance. 1 - 0 Coming from the right, A. Faruqui almost managed to score another goal for Bhubaneswar, but his header was tipped over the bar by the visitors' keeper. It was 1 - 0 at the break. Bhubaneswar had most of the ball, with 84 percent of possession.

After 47 minutes, a couple of quick and successful challenges followed by a shot from just outside the penalty area by S. Venkatesh might have resulted in another goal for Bhubaneswar. However, A. Singh made a spectacular save. D. Nagendra Gandhi stunned the crowd with a brilliant counterattack from the left, giving Nagaland the goal to make it 1 - 1. Bhubaneswar were very close to putting themselves one up after 61 minutes as V. Kapoor got through on the left, but failing in concentration, he shot the ball wide. After several obvious shirt pulling incidents, A. Faruqui got himself booked. The manager of Bhubaneswar was not happy. After 67 minutes, A. Singh came in from the right, feinted, then sped past the off-balance defender to make the score 2 - 1, giving Bhubaneswar the lead. Possession in this half belonged to Bhubaneswar, who controlled the ball 85 percent of the time.

V. Kapoor performed admirably for Bhubaneswar. A. Pande turned in a dismal performance, however. Nagaland's best player was V. Jagadish. A. Najeeb on the other hand, had a terrible day. The match ends 2 - 1.