East Bengal coach Oscar Bruzon is disappointed with the club’s 1-2 defeat to Odisha FC in an away Indian Super League (ISL) clash on Tuesday.
It was East Bengal’s sixth consecutive loss in ISL 2024-25, and the second in a row under the coaching of Bruzon, who took over the reins of the club from interim coach Bino George last week during the club’s 0-2 defeat to Mohun Bagan in the Kolkata derby.
East Bengal appointed Bruzon as a replacement for former head coach Carles Cuadrat, who was sacked earlier this season.
“We did a beautiful job in the game, creating most of the chances, making Odisha FC have a lot of difficulty with the connection of the players in front. They could not connect a run of three or four passes, so at some point, they were just waiting for our mistake to run counterattacks,” Bruzon said at the post-match press conference.
Pointing to the errors of his defenders that cost East Bengal a goal scored by Roy Krishna in the first half, the Spanish coach said, “Unfortunately, in one counter, with something that we had been working on during the week, Roy Krishna, with his speed, was smart enough to find the interval between our left back and centre back and capitalize to get one goal.”
East Bengal levelled the score in the injury time of the first half, with Dimitrios Diamantakos scoring for them.
Odisha FC, however, collected the three points, with Mourtada Fall scoring in the 69th minute.
‘Pity that we missed so many chances’
Regretting the missed chances, Bruzon said, “The game was totally ours. It is a pity that we forgave or missed so many chances, and the moment they got the 1-0, it became much more difficult for us because they slowed the tempo of the game. They were just trying to, yeah, to put us to sleep.”
East Bengal will move on to play in the AFC Challenge League in Bhutan for their group-stage matches. This will provide them with a brief respite before they return to ISL action against Mohammedan SC on November 9.
“No doubts that the break is going to be good for the team to adapt to the ideas of the new coach. But I didn’t want to wait until the break. We need immediate results. It’s already a quarter of the ISL, six games gone, and we have zero points,” he said.
“So the only way to try to qualify for the final stages is by finishing in the top six, and to finish in the top six, you probably need to win ten games. So if you make the calculation, out of 18 games, you probably need to win ten (matches) if you want to qualify. So we are already in a countdown, and the season has just started,” Bruzon opined.
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