A star was born in Indian football at the Nehru Stadium in Fatorda on Saturday.
It’s said that the Kolkata derby makes or breaks the career of a player. Well, Kiyan Nassiri Giri, the 22-year-old son of Jamshed Nassiri, announced his arrival on the big stage in a stunning fashion, scoring a hat-trick in his derby debut and lifting ATK Mohun Bagan from a goal down to hand SC East Bengal a 3-1 thrashing.
The context of the game looked so vastly different when SC East Bengal took the lead against the run of play in the 56th minute through Darren Sidoel. However, the red-and-gold brigade’s joy of scoring for the first time in four derby meetings in ISL history was short-lived and nothing but a false dawn as Kiyan came off the bench on the hour mark to turn the game on its head spectacularly.
Four minutes after replacing Deepak Tangri, the youngster made it 1-1 with his first touch of the game, taking advantage of SC East Bengal defenders’ poor clearance of Liston Colaco’s cross.
A minute later, Liston earned a penalty but David Williams blew the chance.
SC East Bengal heaved a sigh of relief but Kiyan threw their ambitions out of the window with a brilliant strike after Williams’ header ricocheted off the post in the first of the six stoppage-time minutes.
And another opportunistic goal came a couple of minutes later as Kiyan came, saw and conquered the biggest stage of Indian club football.
The victory helped Bagan storm back into the top four, SC East Bengal stay bottom.
