Chennai City hold Churchill to 1-1 draw in I-League tie

Chennai City FC stretched their undefeated run under new coach V. Soundarajan to two successive games as they played out a 1-1 draw against Churchill Brothers here on Tuesday.

Churchill themselves broke their two match losing streak at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in Chennai with Brandon Fernandes (63rd) scoring for the Goan side and Charles de Souza (65th) equalising for the hosts two minutes later.

Soundararajan named an unchanged lineup as he went with the players that defeated Mumbai FC on Saturday.

Michael Rejin was again handed a start while Charles led the lines for the South Indian side as the new coach looked to continue his perfect run.

Churchill, on the other hand, made as much as four changes to the team that lost at Aizawl.

In came Priyant Singh, Satish Singh, Suraj and Brandon Fernandes while Kromah and Wolfe led the lines for the Red Machine.

After surviving a scare in their penalty box from a corner which was headed down by Dhanpal Ganesh in the early exchanges of the tie, Churchill grew into the contest and engineered the first shot on goal in the ninth minute.

The second half started off on a sedate note before Churchill took the lead in the 63rd minute when Echezona was penalised for a handball just outside the area. Brandon stood over the freekick and curled in an absolute beauty that went in off the post, sending the away bench into ecstasy.

However, their joy did not last long, in fact it only lasted all of two minutes. Marcos Vinicius, who came on as a second-half substitute, picked the ball up in midfield and sent in a defence splitting through ball that was chested down by Charles and then poked home from close.

--IANS

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