Some exquisite short passing and impressive attacking moves gifted Megadia a route to the knockout stages of the nations first ever World Indoor Soccer Championships in a thrilling encounter against Outlying States that ended in a 3-1 win to Megadia.
Fairly confident of qualifying for the knockout stages and trying to make sure that key players were rested for it, the Megastars started with Ludovic Van Damme and Vijay Santos upfront and Armando Santos and Gareth O'Connelly in defence, Leigh Nephews also played, making his first appearance of the tournament in goal for the match.
Van Damme and Santos' communication was almost telepathic, creating opportunity after opportunity before finally setting up O'Connelly to score with a brilliantly executed shot from the veteran defender. However, Outlying States were resilient managing to score a scrappy goal after a number of shots coming from a variety of positions to get the score level again. After that, Megadia were less of a threat in attack until, with 10 minutes left, the omnipotent, Austin Freshwater-Blake came on as a substitute for Vijay Santos and scored two spectacular solo goals, dribbling skilfully through the opposition defence before tucking the ball away on both occasions, within the space of 5 minutes.
Megadia will be facing Carasatoga in Pirata in the knockout stages who are ranked 19th in the world, which guarantees that this will be a tough encounter for the Megadian team. But everybody involved in the team will know they are capable of causing an upset.
