Jose Molina highlights 'key points' for Mohun Bagan sealing ISL championship after win against East Bengal

Jose Molina also praised his players after the win.

Jose Molina’s Mohun Bagan won their second Kolkata derby of the 2024-25 Indian Super League (ISL) season with a 1-0 win over East Bengal at the Indira Gandhi Athletic Stadium, Guwahati on Saturday (11 January 2025). It only took one goal from Jamie Maclaren in the first two minutes to decide the game, with the Mariners going eight points clear atop of the league table.

After the game, Jose Molina indicated that he wasn’t totally satisfied with his team’s performance but was happy to see them get the job done. The Spaniard stated: “Yes it was a fair result. To get a better result, you had to score goals and we were not good enough to score more goals.

“We had the chance, but we could not put the ball inside the back of the net. 1-0 is the result, we are happy with that as we got three important points and won the derby. But we would’ve been happier had we been able to score more goals. But at the end of the day, it’s more important to get three points and get us closer to winning the ISL shield.”

“With an extra player (for the final part of the match), our playing quality decreased. We could not convert the counter-attacks to score more goals and we suffered a little bit in the last minutes by allowing them to send in balls into the box. But our centre-backs, the full-backs, and the goalkeeper were all great. They didn’t have a great chance to draw the match, we controlled it well.

“We suffered a bit in the last minute, as we didn’t score more goals and they tried, but I’m happy with the team’s performance. Maybe not so happy in the last minute, but we did a great job to win another derby, get three points to open up a bigger gap with the rest of the rivals,” he also added.

Jose Molina also believes every remaining game in the campaign is crucial for Mohun Bagan to clinch the ISL league championship, despite their major lead. He explained: “All of our remaining matches are crucial to get the championship. When you want to win a championship, you have to win every match, here in Mohun Bagan, you have to win every match and sometimes it’s not enough just to win.

“I feel that today some Mohun Bagan fans are not happy as we only scored one goal. Today was a crucial match and the next one will also be a crucial match. When you want to win a title, you cannot relax and think it doesn’t matter if if don’t win this match. If you do that, the other teams will try to put you in the second or third position. You must work hard to avoid that from happening,” he finished with.

Mohun Bagan are back in action in the ISL on Friday (17 January) when they travel to face Jamshedpur FC on the road.

For more updates, follow Khel Now on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube; download the Khel Now Android App or IOS App and join our community on Whatsapp & Telegram.