RoundGlass Punjab’s Luka Majcen (99), the man-of-the-match, in motion towards Gokulam Kerala within the I-League.
| Photo Credit: Okay. RAGESH

KOZHIKODE

Gokulam Kerala’s marketing campaign to make it a hat-trick of I-League titles suffered a setback on Thursday. After the 1-2 defeat to RoundGlass Punjab, it’s trailing the leaders by 10 factors.

Gokulam is on 24 factors and remains to be third on the desk, the second 1-2 loss in a row however. The win has helped the Punjab aspect meet up with the chief Sreenidi Deccan on 34 factors.

It was a much-needed win for RoundGlass, having drawn its final two matches, towards Kenkre and Sudeva, two groups mendacity on the backside of the desk. After Pawan Kumar Drall’s personal objective put the Punjab males forward, Luka Majcen, the Slovenian striker who pressured the error from the defender, roughly sealed the win along with his strike within the second half.

Though Farshad Noor lowered the margin simply three minutes later, the host’s makes an attempt to drive an equaliser led to disappointment. Noor’s objective got here off a superb go from a fellow-substitute, who had been arrange by the hard-working Vikas Singh Saini.

A couple of minutes earlier, Majcen took benefit of the Gokulam goalkeeper Shibinraj Kunniyil’s failure to collect correctly the header from Khaiminthang Lhungdim off a corner-kick taken by Juan Mera González.

RoundGlass was properly served by its defence, with Hmingthanmawia Ralte, Mohammed Salah and Lhungdim doing wonderful work. But Gokulam’s coach stated that his workforce was denied three penalties by the referee.

The end result:

Gokulam Kerala 1 (Farshad Noor 73) misplaced to RoundGlass Punjab 2 (Pawan Kumar Drall 42-og, Luka Majcen 70).

At Aizawl: Aizawl FC 2 (Ramdinthara 71, Veras 90+7) bt Rajasthan United 1 (Mambataliev 17).