Last season we deserved three point and played better than Bengaluru FC, says Carles Cuadrat ahead of their ISL 2024-25 opening match

The Spaniard mentioned his contributions to the Torchbearers.

East Bengal FC hope to begin their 2024-25 Indian Super League (ISL) campaign positively when they travel to face Bengaluru FC at the Sree Kanteerava Stadium on Saturday (14th September). The Red and Gold Brigade’s head coach, Carles Cuadrat sat down with the media ahead of the same to address various concerns. Here are the excerpts:

Bengaluru FC’s team

It’s a game where Carles Cuadrat faces his former side in his former home turf. But the Spaniard has utmost respect for the Blues, as he noted before the game, “They are a powerful team with quality players and they’ve made an effort in the transfer window to make a better team than last season.”

“They have a very good manager, of course, he was my assistant coach when we won the league championship with Bengaluru. It’s a club that is working well and they know they have to be competitive. They’ll try to get three points and the same thing we’re also trying to do,” he added.

Controversial result last season

Last season, East Bengal were winning against Bengaluru at their home when some questionable decisions overturned the result. When asked if he has fears about the refereeing, Carles Cuadrat explained:  “We think about the game. We think about our tactics and our players are ready. We know that it’s a difficult stadium, I worked almost five years and my Bengaluru FC was very powerful at home.

“Last season, we deserve three points and played better than them, and at the end, the result is what counts and they got three points because the assistant officials and the supporters helped their team a lot. I remember a lot of times when I was there that teams winning the game at the last minutes could be put under a lot of pressure. We are ready to be competitive and go for three points.”

Anwar Ali issue and transfer ban impact

Anwar Ali is suspended from competing for East Bengal after the AIFF banned him following his supposedly “unjust” termination of his Mohun Bagan Super Giant contract this summer. Carles Cuadrat spoke about his absence, saying, “We know that he’ll be a very important player for the club. But the situation is now in our hands, the club are making the decisions and everything is working in the normal situation. I told the player that he’ll be very important for us. But we need to understand that he can’t play tomorrow so I’m planning with the rest of the players. Anwar is training very well.”

With East Bengal handed a two-transfer window ban for the Anwar Ali transfer, the Spaniard isn’t letting that wear him down as he explained, “We don’t look for excuses. We work hard to try and be competitive. My feeling as a coach is that we have a full squad with a lot of options and have three players out as Nishu (Kumar), (Provat) Lakra are injured, and (Anwar) Ali because of his situation.

“But as a coach, I don’t have to think about the next transfer windows because everything is still uncertain with what will happen and that is not in my hands. In my hands is to be competitive and until now we’ve been very competitive. I know that as East Bengal I’ve had more games than since the times of Trevor Morgan, so that means we’re building something and are in the right direction.”

Carles Cuadrat also stated, “Morgan was a big hero as he won two important trophies for the club, but in terms of winning percentage, in the last 37 matches I’ve managed the team, it’s a 45% of wins. What I mean is that we are doing the tactics, working, and trying to get a competitive team. The progress is happening. If you compare with the 10-15 years, it’s happening.

“The players now want to come. Hijazi had offers to move to other countries or other ISL clubs, but he decided keep working with us. That is only one example, more players are pushing to come with us. We don’t have to think of Ali, Nishu, and Lakra – we have to think of what we have and what can get with the players we have.”

Lessons learnt from last season

When asked about what lessons he’s learnt from last season, when his side finished in 8th place after the league stages, Carles Cuadrat replied, “It’s important that the club will finally start the season with the same coach with two consecutive seasons. That means were bringing stability to the club. It means players like Hijazi understand the tactics and how we want to play better.”

He further added, “Now we have built a squad for the future because we have important young talents like Jeakson and Anwar and have improved other parts of the team with good foreigner signings. We are in a process that me as a coach know the league very well, I’ve been the champion of this league and know the players and what is going on in the country.

“I’m very optimistic about what we can build during the season. This is a team for the future, we have players with 2-3 years contract and they are young. We need to know that it’s a challenge to bring stability to the team and fight for trophies.”

Primary objective for East Bengal

When asked about his primary objective for this ISL campaign, Carles Cuadrat hinted towards the playoffs place and noted, “This team has never competed in the ISL play-offs. So need to take it step by step, the plan is to get into the top six and fight for things. We are in the right direction as we are bringing quality players and players with us are developing as players.

“Hijazi (Maher) got his national team cap (Jordan) for the first time, also the players we are providing to the Indian national team, last time it was five but it can be seven too. That is what we’re building. Of course, results have to be there too, if you bring good players, they must bring results. Our aim is to try and be in the top six. When you are in the top six, you are only four games away from the trophy. So it depends on who you are playing in the playoffs and every aspect is going to count. We are working for that.”

Importance of defensive solidity

Finally, Carles Cuadrat spoke about the importance of East Bengal maintaining a strong defensive record this season after their dismal loss to Shillong Lajong in the Durand Cup. He corroborated, “It’s not (the) defender(s) who were not good, the entire team wasn’t good in the loss to Shillong. We have watched videos and analyzed to improve from that.

“We have to understand that it was a strange pre-season because some players arrived late, some difficult issues happened to get match fit because some players spent two months without training, and they faced some discomfort. But that is normal. In Shillong, we played with six new players and that is more than half in 11v11 team. Now we have worked a lot to solve our issues.

Our team got 10 clean sheets in 33 games last season, one clean sheet every three games. We’ve also gotten good balance in terms of scoring goals and conceding, it was really criminal in past seasons in the ISL when the team conceded too many goals and didn’t score many. Sometimes the difference has been more than 10 goals, but not for us.”

“At the end of the season, we scored more goals than we conceded. It’s important to build a good defensive system to be competitive. If you see past seasons of teams who have won the league, like Jamshedpur, Hyderabad, or my Bengaluru, they got the trophy because the teams got a lot of clean sheets and didn’t concede many goals. We don’t go for 6-5 results, the result has to be close and we have to try to score as many as possible, but we have to protect our goal. That is very clear if you must be competitive,” he concluded.

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