Sergio Lobera points at area of improvement for Mohun Bagan after Kerala Blasters win

Mohun Bagan begins the title defence with a clean sheet at home

Sergio Lobera witnessed his Mohun Bagan side pick up a 2-0 win in his first match as their head coach against Kerala Blasters in the opening game of the 2025-26 Indian Super League (ISL) campaign.

Goals from Jamie Maclaren and Tom Aldred helped the Mariners seal a commendable win at the Salt Lake Stadium, ensuring the defending champions began their title defence on a positive note.

Despite seeing his side get a relatively solid win, Sergio Lobera wasn’t entirely happy with their performance. After the game, he explained: “I’m very happy about the result. When it comes to the performance, there are some aspects I’m happy about. As a coach, I feel we need to improve a lot in some situations. I’m happy with certain sections of the game, but we need to improve a lot in the last period of the game.

Lobera stated, “If we want to defend the title, we need to score more goal and we will suffer if we keep passing back, back and back. The first game is never easy; we must improve a lot of things, but I’m finally happy with my players’ effort and with the result. Our feelings are that we waited for this moment for a long time, and we are very happy. We love to play football, and it was exciting to see so many fans here. Hopefully, we can keep working in the best way possible for us as a club and also to help Indian football,” he also added.

Lessons learnt from the win

When asked about the lessons he learnt about Mohun Bagan after the performance, the Spaniard further quipped: “The lesson is that if we keep playing in this style of play, we can be a major danger for the opposition. It’s difficult to stop my amazing players. The second reason we must keep in mind is that if we want to defend the result, we need to score one more goal.

“You cannot go back, because it gives chances to opponents when you play in your own half. I feel we had chances in the first 15 minutes of the second half; we had chances, and you need to keep the game in the opposition half. We will suffer if we keep back-passing. We have the quality of players to keep a high intensity style of play even when we’re suffering, and we need to learn about this,” he further stated.

Mohun Bagan witnessed Kerala Blasters create a large chunk of their chances from the left-wing role, exploiting their right-back position.

Upon being questioned if this is a reason for concern for the Mariners, the Spaniard stated: “I understand that we’ev suffered in the last minutes because we had to go backwards when they put more players in attacking positions to go for the game. Their left winger was very fast, and in 2v1 situations, we suffered. That is why I took Liston (Colaco) off, because he got tired after helping our right-back, and we had some problems there with Manvir (Singh) too.

“It’s not to look at one player for one position, we must learn as a team and as a coach, I must explain to the players what I want. I’m very happy with the performance, but I’m a very demanding coach. I demand more from myself as I feel we can do better things with the team we have. We must show everyone in the second game that we are improving as a team,” he also added.

Can the single-leg format help Mohun Bagan?

Finally, Lobera spoke about his feelings on the single-leg format of the 2025-26 ISL and if the little resting period can impact his team, explaining: “We need to find solutions for this format. We have a very good player, and I have very good professionals, and we must be ready to take on all challenges. There are no excuses about this, and what we prefer doesn’t matter, as the fixtures are there and we need to adapt in this situation.

“I feel that I’m happy with the performance of players not only in training, but they showed character today and played well in some periods of the game. It doesn’t matter about injuries or fewer recoveries, I feel we have enough time to recover and prepare for the next game, and we’ll keep working towards wins,” he also added.

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