A gut punch is what it was!
Leo Costa’s left-footed pile-driver that rippled the net of Chennaiyin FC’s goal on Wednesday night with just about five minutes of regulation left was exactly that.
The defending Indian Super League champions, playing at home at the 'Marina Arena’, were leading 1-0 up until then, seemingly headed for three points. That blinder of a goal though sucked the air out of the stadium, knocked the wind out of Chennaiyin’s players and gobbled up two out of the three points to leave Chennaiyin with just one. It would be a third straight draw for the 2015 champions.
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Four days earlier, they had been involved in another draw at the very same venue. Against Kerala Blasters, their clash ended in a 0-0 stalemate, a record in itself, for it was the first goalless draw at the home of Chennaiyin in the history of the ISL.
Before the Kerala game, Chennaiyin led 1-0 once more away at FC Pune City, but let that lead slip too as Pune equalised to grab a point and a 1-1 draw.
Three games, three points.
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The series of draws have halted Chennaiyin’s momentum and have seen them get caught in the logjam just behind the top two spots in the points table.
Loss of concentration, defensive lapses and a lot many other things can be pinpointed for the way these matches turned out for the champs, but what's irrefutable is that a 1-0 lead is never safe in the game of football. Even if your opponent has hardly troubled you the whole game, a Leo-Costa-like-moment can throw a spanner in the works.
And goals is something the 2016 edition of Chennaiyin FC has struggled with.
Before the season started we knew that Brazilian Elano Blumer wasn't coming back. We knew that Colombian John Stiven Mendoza, last season's top scorer, wasn't returning after choosing to play in the US. These were significant departures, yet, it was premature and a little unfair when almost every third question to head coach Marco Materazzi and the rest of the team centred around the loss of the above duo and how they would cope even before the season had started.
One can only look at that once the season is in play after a few games have been played.
Like having to bake a cake, only this time with a new cream filling inside, the task for Chennaiyin this season lay in seeing whether the new filling worked. And if not, do they change the composition of the cake or just go with what they have?
At the halfway point of the season, indications are that the new filling is a bit hit and miss.
Chennaiyin were amongst the top goalscorers in both previous editions, with 27 and 32 goals to their name in 2014 and 2015 respectively. In 2014, their tally was the highest in the tournament, despite bowing out in the semifinals and last year they were second only to FC Goa in both goals and shots on goal (228). They also had a healthy assist rate - 23 of the 27 goals were assisted in 2014 while doing even better in 2015 with 29 assists to their 32 goals.
Sticking to the league phase though (not including playoffs), that number boils down to 24 in 2014 and 25 in 2015, near identical. So far in 2016, the reigning champions have found the back of the net only eight times in seven games and at their current rate of 1.14 goals a game, they are likely to end up with 16-17 goals at the end of the league phase which would be a massive dropoff compared to previous seasons.
Of course, that scoring rate is subjected to various spikes and dips along the course of the season, so that could prove deceptive. However, even considering the same stage in the previous years (tally after 7 games), the 2016 outfit is lagging behind with just eight goals, when in comparison, they had 15 in 2014 and 11 last year.
Now when you bring in Elano and Mendoza into the picture, they were the two players who had the most number of shots on goal on this team. Last season, out of their total of 228 shots (all matches), Mendoza launched 58 shots (25.4%) and Elano 38 (16.7), with Jeje Lalpekhlua third on 21 (9.2%). That's almost 43% of that attacking output ripped out from the side considering their absence this year.
Not just the numbers
Following the second game of the season, in which Chennaiyin suffered a heavy 1-3 loss at home to the Delhi Dynamos, Materazzi introduced Italian striker Davide Succi to the starting eleven, opting to go with the lone forward up front to accommodate an extra midfielder in the unit. In the five games since his introduction, Succi has started three of them; Jeje was given the nod against Pune away and Mumbai at home on Wednesday.
With Succi in the lineup, most of the service to him has been aerial, with the 35-year-old Italian looking to win headers and get knock-ons for his teammates making forward runs. Hans Mulder and Raphael Augusto in the centre of midfield have been tasked with much of the creative duty while the defensive four at the back have also plugged away with those long balls to their target man. In short, it's been a system that's been functional and fastidious.
Jeje, a key part of the attacking triumvirate last season, has been used selectively by Materazzi this season. His last two appearances have seen him score the team's solitary goal in both of those games and the attack has more pace and combination play up front with him in the side.
Whether it was Materazzi's aim all along to experiment regularly in the first half of the season with the aim of arriving at his best line-up, we will never know. But he does have a set of interesting results in front of him to ponder over now.
New acquisition Hans Mulder was supposed to be a big part of this new attack, but he was injured in the first half of the Kerala game and was withdrawn, affecting their chances in that game and ruling him out of the Mumbai game. There is no word yet on how long he will be out.
Thoi Singh featured for the first time this past Wednesday in the Mumbai game, but lasted only 45 minutes, having been replaced by Dudu at half-time.
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Chennaiyin largely relied on aerial balls over the top to their forwards while constructing their attacks. With not too much of play on the ground, the hosts didn't get many openings with this strategy.
In response to that and his team's lack of cutting edge, Materazzi had this to say - “It actually just happened during the game because they played English style, so we wanted to exploit the long balls, but what I have to say is that maybe we could have exploited better the 20 minutes (the last 20 minutes of the game) with Peluso. But as I said earlier, I have no complaints about my team. I just want to congratulate both teams and also the fans because I think they had fun.”
