The whole team made a mistake in the goals- Khalid Jamil
(Courtesy : I-League)
The 41-year-old's counterpart had a much different take on Sunday's Kolkata Derby.
East Bengal boosted their title hopes at the expense of fierce rivals Mohun Bagan, brushing past The Mariners 2-0 at the Salt Lake Stadium on Sunday. Jaime Santos Colado and Jobby Justin’s goals were enough for the Red and Gold Brigade to do the double over Bagan after 15 years.
Alejandro Menendez seemed delighted after securing the victory. When asked about his feelings on the way his side won the game he explained, “Now, my team is improving with every win. The difference between the two derbies was that we played really well and closed out the match, which is something different from the last time.”
When asked about whether focusing on set-pieces did the trick for East Bengal the Spaniard explained, “Of course, we are training with utmost concentration, but also to be playing better. When we train in closed doors, it’s better for us as the players can focus on only practising. It helps us with improving our performance-level and also on the set-pieces.”
The tactician also spoke about how they strategized to stop Sony Norde. He said, “We didn’t do anything special to stop Sony Norde. We prepared to stop the team as a whole. They have a special style of attacking and we prepared to stop that. Only if Sony had the ball, we wanted to be very close to him and stop him from creating chances.”
When asked about how he influenced Justin’s spike in performance he explained, “I think that Jobby is progressing with every match. It’s not only because he’s scoring, but he’s also working on his complete game.
He’s playing very well in the box, outside the box and in the middle as well. Right now, he’s a more complete player than he was last season and if he continues to play like this, he’ll deserve to play in the national team,” he opined.
Menendez also gave his opinion on how many points he feels East Bengal need to win the title. He said, “I don’t know whether last season the champions got 35-37 points. Maybe this season, it’ll be different. The important thing is that many teams are fighting for the title and have to play between each other. Many teams will lose many points and the team which will be most consistent will win the title.”
Now, after this victory, we believe strongly about the title than we did before the match. Now, we have a few options to win the title,” he concluded.
Bagan boss Khalid Jamil spoke on what he felt went wrong in the match saying, “Everyone worked hard for us. However, we couldn’t really get the result. I never complain about anybody. If we lose, it’s solely my mistake.”
Winning or losing is not in our hands. In order to win games, you need to work hard or else, you cannot expect to win anything,” he added.
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When asked about whether Yuta Kinowaki’s absence had an impact Jamil explained, “No, I don’t think so. Anything can happen in training. That shouldn’t hamper our preparation for the match. Yuta suffered a calf injury, which stopped him from playing the game.”
He also spoke about the culprits for the loss, but didn’t single out anyone. He said, “The whole team made a mistake in the goals. The marking was poor and the players couldn’t stop them from causing problems.”
When asked to give his opinion on Norde’s performance he said, “Norde played really well and tried his best to make something happen. He worked hard in trying to create chances.”
[KH_RELATED_NEWS title="Related News"][/KH_RELATED_NEWS]Finally, giving his assessment on Dipanda Dicka and Kingsley Eze’s performances he said, “When you are in this line of sport like a striker is in football, performances like this happen. He’s physically strong and tried his best, but things didn’t go his way.”
If his performance wasn’t good, I wouldn’t have played him (Kingsley). He’s playing pretty good and that’s why he’s getting so much priority in my side,” he added.
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