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ShareMumbai: St Xavier's High School, Fort, and St Francis D'Assisi High School, Borivali, will meet in the finals of the boys under-14 Utpal Sanghvi Cup in the MSSA inter-school football tournament.
The Fort boys beat St Anne's High School, Orlem, 2-1 while St Francis overpowered Jamnabai Narsee School, Juhu, by an identical margin in Thursday's semi-final matches.
Xavier's drew first blood against the boys from Orlem, courtesy their skipper Sagar Sorathi, who was quick to take advantage of a free-kick from outside the box.
But their happiness was short-lived. Five minutes later, Anne's Godwin Tauro managed to tap the ball in following a goalmouth melee. The scoreboard read 1-1 at the half-way mark.
In the second session, Xavier's went all out. The efforts finally paid off in the 48th minute when Krishna Dassera found the ball unattended after bouncing back from the hands of Anne's goalkeeper.
Anne's tried hard to find the equaliser, with livewire forward Joel Castellino making several raids. But he was closely marked to make any further damage.
"We deliberately kept a check on their No. 18 player (Castellino) and that helped us quite a bit. We should not have conceded the goal but for a blunder on the part of our goalkeeper. I think we played quite well," said Xavier's coach Alex Fernandes after the match.
The other semi-final saw some indisciplined behaviour by the Jamnabai Narsee boys. St Francis D'Assisi dominated the match throughout, with skipper Cloyce Crasto scoring a brace for his side. Jamnabai saw some hope when Karan Sawhney scored in the 20th minute, and that was it.
The jarring part of the match was the conduct of Jamnabai skipper Daksh Rana. He got into a big argument with the referee over a penalty call. Rana thought it should have been given in their favour.
"He shouldn't have done that. While I was trying to calm the parents when the referee did not call for a penalty, he (Rana) got into an argument with the referee. It was unfortunate," Jamnabai Narsee coach Chanchal Singh said.
Rana could face action if referee Mohammad Khan files a report with the Mumbai School Sports Association.
