A charged up Maharashtra dished out a determined fighting performance to score a stunning 2-1 win against Punjab in a Group-B league match of the National Football Championship 2019 for the Santosh Trophy and played at the Guru Nanak Stadium, in Ludhiana on Saturday evening.
The hero of Maharashtra’s success was the Mumbai-based ONGC player Arif who struck both the goals late in the second half to enable his team seal their first win in the five-team group.
Maharashtra had drawn the first match 2-2 with Karnataka and then went down fighting 2-3 to Assam in the second match.
Arif, who came in as a substitute and scored both the goals against Assam, was given a place in the starting eleven and he did not disappoint his coach by continuing with his impressive run of form and scoring the two crucial goals.
Punjab against the run of play took the lead when Sukhpreet Singh rocked the Maharashtra citadel in the 39th minute.
But, Maharashtra put that setback behind and came out fighting and took the fight to the Punjab camp and their efforts bore fruits when they were awarded a penalty which was successfully converted by Arif in the 78th minute. Thereafter, Maharashtra continued to search for another goal and Arif answered their prayers with another strike at the death to help his team snatch a deserving win.
With this win Maharashtra has four points from three games and will next take on Sikkim in the final league encounter on April 17.
Result – Group-B: Maharashtra 2 (Arif Shaikh 78th-pen, 90+4th) beat Punjab 1 (Sukhpreet Singh 39th).