Frank Dauwen feels Drincic's red card will be big problem for Kerala Blasters

Blasters suffer their first defeat this season

After enjoying their best start ever to a season in the Indian Super League, Kerala Blasters has tasted defeat for the very first time, in a nail biting thriller against Mumbai City. 

The Islanders took the lead at the stroke of half time, courtesy of Diaz. Kerala bounced back in the 57th minute, but conceded just minutes later.

Their valiant efforts to get an equaliser didn’t transpire, and the Islanders triumphed from a hard fought battle.

After the frustrating defeat, Kerala’s assistant head coach Frank Dauwen spoke to the media. Here are the excerpts from the conversation.

Impact of first goal

Having made a decent start to the game, Kerala went a goal down just before the end of the first half. When asked if that goal impacted Kerala’s momentum, Frank said “Yeah, maybe a little bit, I think so. We started the game very well, with good pressure on the ball. But then we conceded one goal and you see then the press got slower and then we had more difficulties to get the ball.” he opined.

The Belgian also spoke on what went wrong for his team, and said, “Also in my opinion when we had the ball, we had no solutions in front of us to make chances. But I think in the second half we talked a little bit about this to keep the pressure back and that was much better.”

On Drincic’s absence in next game

Kerala’s centre back Milos Drincic was shown a red card for his misconduct on the pitch. This now means that the Montenegrin will miss Kerala’s next game. Speaking about the impact his absence will make, Drincic said the following.

“Yeah, it's difficult because he had one yellow card I think and also one stupid red card. But in every situation you must be calm, so we lost a bit. So that's a big problem for us because Leskovic is not fit yet at the moment, so maybe he will be back for that game.” he said.