The Boss Discusses A Narrow Loss At The Nehru Stadium In Kochi…
His thoughts on the narrow defeat…
For me it is about always going hundred percent and trying our best. It was my decision to try to save a little bit of energy in going with the 5-4-1- system. The effort was in trying to not give away a lot of space to Ogbeche and Messi Bouli because we know that they are very good players. It was about being trying to be competitive at the back and then go on the counter attack. It worked perfectly for the 0-1 and was going well for 0-2. Unfortunately, we were not clinical in front of the goal. And it’s something that we have been suffering throughout the season.
We have been creating the chances but if you don’t make a gap of two goals, then you’ll always have troubles, and that’s what happened. They scored from two set pieces very close to the box. If you see the mood of the other team, it was going down and with 0-2 it would’ve been a comfortable match. But because they were playing at home, and the fact that they scored right before the half time, they got the mental boost for the second half. It happens in football, and we have to understand that.
On Udanta’s performance…
He’s a very good player who is part of the national team and he has been giving us a lot of things during the last few seasons. I think that this season has been working very well in the defence and is helping the fullbacks a lot. But unfortunately, he has not been that clinical in attacks and has not been scoring goals and creating assists, like he was doing the last season. But we support him and we have to try to help him to get the good dynamic and to become clinical again. You know, sometimes little things change the momentum of the player. He got a wonderful assist against Kerala in the home game where Augusto scored with a good header but it wrongly denied and maybe with that assist, he gets confident, and does better things, you know. So you have to say that football is full of little details that change the dynamics, little details that help you to go in one direction or another direction. And for this season, unfortunately Udanta hasn’t been able to hit that spot every time.
On fatigue setting in this stage of the season…
We don’t have that many games in India as compared to other countries. We have a number of games added up when you play the AFC competitions, so it’s a natural situation that the players aren’t used to that, and get tired. So that’s it. And that’s why I had set us up in a compact formation because we had some suspensions as well in Sunil and Juanan. In the next AFC Cup game, we’re going to miss Suresh because of his yellow card suspension in that competition. So I think that the team is competing very well. And it’s clear that for us, it was really important to reach the play-offs and the AFC Cup Group Stage. And we’re working for that.
