The Goa in Goals: 118 in two rigged matches

Even in their wildest dreams, Thierry Henry and Ronaldo couldn’t have imagined these scorelines. In a monsoon shower of goals in Goa la...

Even in their wildest dreams, Thierry Henry and Ronaldo couldn’t have imagined these scorelines. In a monsoon shower of goals in Goa last night, two teams competing to win promotion to the state football league’s First Division scored 118 goals in two separate matches — at roughly a goal every minute and a half.

The basketball-like scores were prompted by a healthy bout of match-fixing; both winning teams, Curtorim and Wilred, had apparently paid off their weaker opponents. The team who scored more goals would be promoted and, as club officials posted at the rival ground relayed scores back to their bosses, it was simply a matter of who was better at target practice.

Result? Curtorim beat Sangolda 61-1 (60 of those goals coming in the second half alone), Wilred beat Dona Paula 55-1 after leading 6-0 at half time.

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It’s possibly a record in Indian football, which is largely unchronicled; old-timers were hard-pressed, though, to recollect a similar scoreline.

‘‘Unbelievable’’, said Savio Messias, secretary of the Goa Football Association, which scrambled to effect damage control. Its first move was an emergency meeting, at which it handed a one-year ban on players, officials and committees of all four clubs. It has also recommended to the general body that all concerned be banned for life.

Ironically, the GFA, sensing trouble, had ordered a simultaneous kick-off and posted observers at both grounds, as is the practice around the world in such matches. The onus was on Wilred, who were behind Curtorim on goal difference, and they did their best.

Curtorim, though, were kept abreast of events and kept going a half-dozen better. It was a ‘‘retaliatory move’’, admitted club general secretary Arnold D’Costa, who quit his post soon after the incident came out in the open.

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By contrast, club secretary Diniz Sardinha said it was ‘‘ability’’ that gave his side the match.

The football was, predictably, farcical. One spectator to Wilred’s win said the game looked suspect right after the second half. The Dona Paula team, 6-0 down, took the field with substitute goalkeeper Zito Estrocioas, who then allowed any goal-bound ball to simply travel in.

After a dozen goals, he’d presumably had enough so a defender was put in goal and the keeper went up to join the forwards — where he struck it rich, scoring his team’s only goal. His replacement in goal then took the simple expedient of passing every loose ball back to the opponents; his teammates helped out by passing or crossing the balls in for the Wilred strikers.

Shooting fish in a barrel would require greater exertion.