Carles Cuadrat reveals what went wrong for East Bengal after loss against Kerala Blasters

The Torchbearers looked bright initially but succumbed to yet another defeat.

Carles Cuadrat’s East Bengal FC suffered their second straight loss in the 2024-25 Indian Super League (ISL) with a bitter 2-1 defeat to Kerala Blasters FC at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, Kochi on Sunday (22nd September). Despite taking the lead through PV Vishnu in the 59th minute, the Red & Gold Brigade failed to hold onto the lead as Noah Sadaoui and Kwame Peprah completed the comeback for the hosts.

What did Carles Cuadrat say about the loss?

East Bengal head coach Carles Cuadrat was disappointed with the loss and believes that his side were not able to capitalize on their ‘good moments’. He stated after the game, “We have to keep working. The team is doing their best, but football is a game of moments and we were not successful in taking advantage of clear-cut chances. But these things happen in football and we’ve seen in the ISL that there are a lot of goals and things happen after the 85th minute. This time, it happened to us.”

“Things did not work in our favor and it was not in our opportunity to get that second goal. We have to keep working, understand what we need, and that we play some moments of good football – which has to be the base of building up the system. The plan for the next games is that it’s clear the team is under construction.

This was the first game for Anwar Ali, and the second game for Hector Yuste. We’ve had a long pre-season, but we didn’t have the players to work with because they were involved in different situations. We haven’t done well in the first two games, but I’m sure that the players will give reasons for positive things to come up,” he also added.

Carles Cuadrat also opened up on the defensive fumbles made by East Bengal in the second half and poor passing that led to the second goal, explaining, “We have been working a lot on our passing, we’ve training a lot to make the right passes and the right finishing. It’s a question of making good decisions in the right moments, we are working on that.

I know that the guys will improve with more training and having been here for two seasons and before I was in Bengaluru FC as well. I know that the young players in Indian football are excited but the basics are not there sometimes, so you must teach them at times to execute their basics and improve in the things that can make a difference in matches. That’s my job and I’m doing that.”

“We’ve seen some players last season that were in the club for a long time, like (Mohamed) Rakip, Souvik Chakrabarti and they were not playing often and with me they have been laying more, learning things. This is a process, you have a new squad and new players. Today we start the game with six new players, so it takes time.

I’m a coach in football and I know we’ve been trying to win points in the first matches and the players have the quality to make big things happen, I don’t know when but we are going to the understanding of what we want. It’s a long season, this was only the second game of the season and a lot more things will happen,” Cuadrat concluded.

East Bengal will be hoping to get their first win of the ISL campaign in their first home match at the Salt Lake Stadium against FC Goa on 27th September.

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