Al Wihdat settles scores against East Bengal

Jordan’s Al Wihdat club took the revenge of its home defeat against East Bengal as they outperformed Kolkata outfit 4-2 in front of its devout crowd in the fourth-round Group B return-leg match of the AFC Cup league played at the Salt Lake Stadium here on Wednesday.

The expectations from the East Bengal team were too high and unrealistic after having beaten Al Wihdat 2-0 in Jordan on April 2 in their away match. But the Wednesday’s match virtually turned out to be a one-sided affair after the host meekly surrendered against Wihdat in just 34 minutes of the play as the Jordan outfit had earned a decisive 4-2 lead by that time.

Al Wihdat’s Rafat Jaber put his team ahead in the sixth minute of the game. East Bengal’s Syed Rahim Nabi restored parity five minutes later off a pass from Edmilson Marques.

Jaber scored the team’s as well as his second in the 23rd minute to again go into lead. However East Bengal players were giving shoulder to shoulder to its opponents as Edmilson equalised soon with a spectacular floater in the 27th minute.

Meanwhile, Edmilson was red-carded towards the closing stages of the match, which means the ace striker won’t be able to play against Safa FC here on April 30.

The red-and-gold brigade may still make it to the quarters with different permutations and combinations coming into play but a victory on Wednesday would have certainly got them enter to the quarterfinals.

The Kolkata Outfit will now have to beat Safa FC in a return-leg match at home and hope that Al Wihdat plays a blank draws in their next two encounters.

Al Wihdat, 10-time Jordanian premier league winners, upped the ante of their game a notch or two as their third goal came in the 31st minute. Khalil’s penetrating pass was slotted inside the net by Mahmoud Hasan to read the scoreline 3-2.

Al Wihdat wasted not much of time to score their fourth that was really an amazing one. Al Wihdat’s agile Hasan snatched in-between a Mehtab Hussain’s bizarre back pass to custodian Paul and instantly guided it towards the goal to make it 4-2.

TEAMS

Al Wihdat: Mahmoud Qandil, Haitham Semrin, Hayder Kadhem, Mohammad Jarrar, Faisal Ibrahim, Jaber Rafat, Musab Al-Rifae, Amer Khalil (Hammad Mosa), Issa Alsapah (Bamba Abdouramane), Basem Othman (Fadi Shahin), Mahmoud Hasan.

East Bengal: Subrata Paul, Surkumar Singh, M. Suresh (Jayanta Sen), M. Bolaji, Debabrata Roy; Mehrajuddin Wadao, Mehtab Hussain, Gift (Vinu Jose), Alvito D'Cunha, Syed Rahim Nabi, Edmilson.

Referee: Minh Tri Vo (Vietnam)