Carlos Pena: We missed a little bit of aggression in front of goal

The FC Goa boss felt his team could have won the game.

FC Goa failed to make it three wins in-a-row in the Indian Super League (ISL 2022-23) as they played out a 1-1 draw against Odisha FC at the Kalinga Stadium on Monday. Noah Sadaoui gave Carlos Pena's side the lead two minutes into the game, but Diego Mauricio brought things level before half time.

Odisha went down to 10 men after Sahil Panwar was sent off in the 67th minute, but were able to hold on to frustrate Goa and grab a point.

Pena satisfied with one point against Odisha FC

FC Goa head coach Carlos Pena was a little bit frustrated not to get three points. But he also stated about being relatively pleased to go away from a difficult stadium with one point.

After the game, he said: “We got a point and it’s difficult to get points here at Odisha, against a very good team at a difficult stadium. We are happy because we got a point, but I feel that we could’ve got more."

“The team gave a great effort in the second half. We absolutely dominated that half and got enough chances to get the three points. But we tried and got one point. We must value this point and move on thinking as if we won,” he added.

Could Goa have been more aggressive against 10-men Odisha?

FC Goa played the final 25 minutes or so of the game against a 10-men Odisha FC side. They dominated the proceedings but failed to get the winning goal. When asked if he felt that his players could’ve had a more attacking approach in the final minutes, the Spaniard said: “We tried! We put more players in the attack and tried to open the pitch and put in more crosses.

“We totally dominated things in the second half, but we missed a little bit of aggression in front of the goal. I give this value to this point, as I said before the game that it was difficult to get even one point in these final games. We’ll try to get three points in our next game at home,” he mentioned.

Pena’s objectives for final league games

After this draw, FC Goa have some intimidating matches up ahead. Their next two matches are at home against league leaders Mumbai City and Chennaiyin FC. When asked about his objectives for those last two home games, Carlos Pena said: “First of all, we’ll try to recover from this game. My players gave a great effort in this game. We have a lot of time to prepare for the next one. We play the next game at home and we’ll try to get three points,” he added.