Abhishek Yadav celebrates his goal against Delhi Dynamos.Abhishek Yadav made his debut in the Hero Indian Super League for Mumbai City FC against the Delhi Dynamos FC at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in Delhi on Friday. The tall and strongly built striker, who was brought on in the 71st minute for Subhash Singh, scored his side’s only goal of the night in a 4-1 loss. Yadav did well to meet Sushil Kumar Singh’s delivery into the box and boot it past Delhi goalkeeper Kristof Van Hout. A prolific scorer in domestic football, the former international has 36 caps for India and spent most of his playing career in the maximum city with Mahindra United and Mumbai FC. The 34-year-old striker was happy about hitting the target in his first appearance but Yadav acknowledged that the team had failed as a whole as he spoke to indiansuperleague.com in an exclusive post-match interview.How do you feel about scoring on your debut?Personally, it’s a really good feeling, but as far as the scoreline is concerned, I’m really disappointed. I’m happy that I contributed to the team to some extent though.What do you think went wrong today?I think they scored goals at the right time, whenever we looked dangerous they scored a goal. I think that was the key, the timing of the goals really undid us.What about your defensive line?I think it’s really unfair to blame the defence. We failed as a team. We lose as a team and we win as a team so we all have to take the responsibility for the defeat.What’s going wrong, why is there no finishing?I think we are creating chances, it’s just a rough patch that we are going through, but I’m hopeful because we are training very hard. We have worked hard and I hope that in the next match we’ll sort that out.Have you been scoring goals in training?Everybody scores goals in training, it’s what you do in the match that matters. But everybody’s been working hard in training and I’m happy on a personal note that I got a goal today. But it would have been happier if we had won the match.What does the coach expect from you as a player?I think training is the most important thing, your personal goals can be kept aside as long as you’re contributing to the team and the team wins. I think that’s what the coach wants and we need to start winning matches now.How would you rate the chances of Mumbai City now?I think it’s still pretty tight, if you look at Kerala and Goa, three matches ago they were pretty much last on the table. So if you win two or three matches in a row, you jump up the table. I’d say we still have a chance and we’ll try our best in the next match.
