Oscar Bruzon reveals key takeaways from East Bengal's loss to Kerala Blasters in Kalinga Super Cup

Oscar Bruzon’s East Bengal came into the game as defending champions.

Oscar Bruzon’s East Bengal were knocked out of the 2025 Kalinga Super Cup after a dismal 2-0 loss to Kerala Blasters at the Kalinga Stadium, Bhubaneswar on Sunday (20 April, 2025).

Jesus Jimenez’s 41st minute penalty as well as a smashing goal from Noah Sadaoui in the 64th minute helped the Tuskers eliminate the defending champions and move into the quarterfinals.

A dejected Oscar Bruzon slammed his team’s overall approach for the game, stating: “Very disappointing result for us, but it’s the consequences for the poor performance of my players. I take responsibility for what happened, but I hope that this is information for all of us that this is not the East Bengal we want. We need a lot of changes.

“If we want to finish in top positions in all the Indian competitions, this is clearly onto enough. Today, Kerala Blasters dominated all the sectors, their players were more hungry and they won all the second balls. Disappointed with the attitude, second with the performance and third with the quality of our players,” Oscar Bruzon also added.

On what went wrong for East Bengal

Speaking about what went wrong for his side in the game, Oscar Bruzon noted: “They were more hungry, more decisive and won all the actions – be it second ball, closing our players or have more numbers close to t he ball, clear build up and set-pieces. It’s not a matter of attitude, but we need a lot of changes. Despite having a lot of good moments this season and solving the problems of the beginning of the season, I’m disappointed and frustrated as we don’t have enough resources to play with the top teams of India.

“Besides from the first 30 minutes today, what went wrong is that when you concede you need to return. Before conceding the first goal, the first 30 minutes after that the team was okay, but after they scored the goal I saw that the heads went down and the attitude of no use. Kerala grew into the game and we were worse and worse with all our chances. Today there was no solution for us to turn around the game,” Oscar Bruzon further quipped.

On lessons learnt from the loss

When asked about what his major takeaways from East Bengal’s campaign were, the gaffer explained: “came into a difficult moment, and the season started badly. Coming from behind was tough for us. We had some good months in ISL – December, January and February we started building up confidence and even in the AFC Challenge League against Arkadag we had a lot of chances and we were not worse than them. What it showed today that it’s not enough, despite all the hard work we have put in, it’s sad to see that result. We need many changes and that will be kept in mind in my talks with management.”

Finally, when asked about East Bengal’s areas of improvement for the next campaign, Bruzon stated: “I think we have a good set-up of Indian players. But we need to reinforce a couple of positions. The rest of the things need to be observed because this is not enough. I don’t want to blame anyone. It’s been difficult for me to improve the mentality of this team and make them hungrier for victories.

“We have been inconsistent, we’ve found good games where we could defeat the strongest teams in India. But the attitude and performance of today tells me this is the East Bengal that started the season and it’s the worst way to end the season,” he finished off with.

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