Mohanraj saves at 0-0, Gogoi scores twice, and NorthEast United go through with a perfect record
NorthEast United are into the Durand Cup quarter-finals as Group F winners. The closest FC1 came to them was a penalty in the seventh minute.
Aug 11, 2026
FC1 had the best chance of the opening exchanges in Guwahati, and it was a penalty. Robin Yadav handled a corner inside the first seven minutes, Mousa Ahmed Quersehi stepped up, and K Mohanraj went low to his left to keep it out on his debut for NorthEast United. Two minutes later the Highlanders were in front. They won 3-1, finished Group F with three wins from three, and are through to the quarter-finals of the 135th Durand Cup.
Parthib Gogoi scored in each half
The opener took three passes to unpick a defence that had just survived. Antonio Moyano fed Jithin M.S., who had run between two defenders, and the low cross reached Parthib Sunder Gogoi unmarked at the back post. He did not have much to do once it arrived, which is usually a sign the run was the difficult part.
His second, nine minutes after the restart, was messier and better. Moyano swung in a free-kick, Eneko Satrustegui got his head to it, and the ball dropped into a knot of bodies where Gogoi took one touch to settle it and finished through the crowd.
Alaaeddine Ajaraie made it three, and it was Gogoi who put him in with a pass that split the last line. The Moroccan lifted it over the goalkeeper as he advanced. That is six for Ajaraie in three matches at this tournament, and nobody else in the field had more than five going into the night.
FC1 pulled one back through Mohmad Ilyas in the 71st minute, and the manner of it will bother Juan Pedro Benali more than the concession. Quersehi, the man who missed the penalty, slid the ball through, the NorthEast defence stopped and waited for a flag, and Ilyas took a touch before rolling it through the goalkeeper’s legs.
Ten changes, and it barely showed
Benali changed ten of the eleven that beat Karbi Anglong Morning Star 4-1 in the previous round. Moyano was the only survivor, and he had a hand in both of Gogoi’s goals. Etyan Gonzalez Morales and Satrustegui were making their first starts for the club.
That is the useful thing to take out of a 3-1 win over a side ranked far below you. NorthEast United are an Indian Super League club whose group contained two regional sides from elsewhere in Assam and a first-time entrant from Jammu and Kashmir, so the group stage was never going to tell us much about how good they are. It can tell us how deep they are, and a rebuilt eleven led 3-0 by the hour.
FC1 go home with three points from three matches on their debut, all of them from a 2-1 win over Karbi Anglong on 3 August that they finished with ten men. Khalid Qayoom picks a side made up almost entirely of players from Jammu and Kashmir, and they were beaten 3-0 by Bodoland in between. The penalty at 0-0 was the closest they came to something against the holders.
What the table says now
NorthEast United end the group on nine points, with thirteen scored and two conceded across wins over Bodoland (6-0), Karbi Anglong (4-1) and FC1. Second place is still open. Bodoland play Karbi Anglong on 13 August, the last day of the group stage, and a win would put them on six points and into the argument for one of the two best runner-up places that join the six group winners in the last eight.
The quarter-finals are on 16 and 17 August across Ranchi, Kolkata and Shillong. The semi-finals follow on 19 and 20 August, and the final is at the Vivekananda Yuba Bharati Krirangan on 23 August, where NorthEast United won it last year by beating Diamond Harbour 6-1. That made them the first side to retain the Durand Cup since East Bengal’s run from 1989 to 1991, and they have not lost a match in the competition since 2023.
Three group games have shown that the squad is deep and that Ajaraie is scoring at a rate nobody else is matching. None of them have shown how this side copes with an opponent from its own league, because it has not met one yet. That question arrives on 16 August.