Victorious Stallion, Global set up crucial Tuesday clash

MANILA, Philippines –Stallion-Sta. Lucia did just enough to solidify their place on top of the United Football League table with a 2-0 victory over Pachanga Diliman on Thursday night at the Emperador Stadium in McKinley Hill.

The Stallions managed to pull off the victory even without their head coach Ernie Nierras, who is coaching the Philippine Malditas in the AFC women’s Asian Cup qualifiers in Bangladesh.

Hector Zaghi opened fire in the eight minute to give Stallion the early lead. Pachanga almost came back with the equalizer in several occasions to no avail.

Rufo Sanchez, who leads the league in scoring with 16 goals, turned to decoy in this match against Pachanga’s leech-like defense. The ploy proved successful when Matthias Bonhevi doubled the lead off a Sanchez assist in 79^th minute.

The win put the Stallion five points ahead of second running Global, who later won in the second match.

With only three matches left in their schedule, Stallion improved to 42 points with their 14^th win against a lone loss.

Global is a distant second with 37 points after improving to 12-1-1 win-draw-loss card following a similar 2-0 victory over Phil. Air Force.

Misagh Bahadoran and Jeff Christiaens delivered the goals to make up for the absence of Izzo Elhbabib. The Sudanese striker, who is Global’s scoring leader with 10 goals, did not play due to league suspension.

The hard-fighting Airmen played the league powerhouse toe-to-toe in the first 56 minutes. But Bahadoran caught a Ben Starosta cross in the next minute for a beautiful header that broke the scoreless spell.

Christiaens sealed the win 11 minutes later with a curling free kick.

Both Global and Stallion’s victories set up their make-or-break match on Tuesday that could well go down as the championship match of the season.

Pachanga remained at fifth place with 22 points on 7-1-7 win-draw-loss card while the Airmen are in danger of being relegated to the second division as they got stuck in ninth spot with only six points on two victories against 13 defeats.