Mumbai City FC kept their hopes of making the playoffs of Hero Indian Super League (ISL) 2017-18 alive when they struck late to pip NorthEast United FC 3 – 2 at the Mumbai Football Arena on Thursday. Lucian Goian had scored an own goal that had leveled things on the night for the Highlanders, but he made amends for it by coming up with a late goal to rescue all three points for the Islanders. The Romanian spoke to indiansuperleague.com after Mumbai’s last home match this season and shared his thoughts. Here are the excerpts.

How does it feel to still be in contention for a semi-final spot?

It’s a nice feeling which would have been much better if we had better chances to qualify, but as long as we have a chance, even if it’s one percent, we are going to play till the end. Today we showed that we have the chance to play till the end, we’re fighting till the end and the goal came and it was a very important victory for us and we have to be happy for that. From tomorrow we have to start thinking about the next game.

Talk us through the goals.

First goal, I just tried to save the ball and I couldn’t. To score the winning goal is a fantastic feeling in front of our fans and especially since it was in the 90th minute. For a defender, as we are not scoring too many times, to score the winning goal, you can’t be happier.

How does it feel to play in a loud atmosphere?

It is a very good feeling and we have some very nice fans. We enjoy playing here. This is our home and I am very sorry that we couldn’t give them more this year as we lost some games at home, some of which in my opinion, we didn’t deserve to lose. But this is football. This was our last game in front of our fans and we are very happy that we finished the home games with a win.

Your thoughts on the next game against Delhi Dynamos?

We have to think about us, we just don’t have to think about Delhi. If we are doing what we have to do, we will have no worries. During the course of today, we showed that we have quality, we are a strong team and I think we deserve to be in the top four at this moment but this is football and we have to hope because we have quality and we still believe.