FC Pune City head coach Franco Colomba cut a dejected figure post his side’s agonising 1-0 loss to Kerala Blasters FC at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, Kochi on Tuesday. The coach was very disappointed that his side could not win their crucial game and progress to the knockout round, but he was overall very happy with his team’s performance and insisted that Pune were unlucky to have lost the match.“This evening as coach, I am very happy because the team played really well and with a competitive spirit. We crossed well and the movement of the players was good, and tactically too, we played very well but we couldn’t score the goal. All of this is very important but it is also very important to score, we didn’t, and so we lost,” the Italian official said at the post-match press conference.Colomba acknowledged that football is like that, as the better team can also lose that game. “Football is like that, sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. I really appreciate how we played, not only in this match but in the last game too, because of which I am satisfied. The technical staff, my players and I are really sad but we have to be proud of the way we played,” Colomba said.Nigerian striker Dudu Omagbemi, who was also at the press conference, bemoaned his side’s failure to take their chances but also blamed refereeing decisions for the loss: “We played really well, we had a lot of chances in the first half and we knew exactly what we had to do. We didn’t score and that is what lost us the game. To be honest, I feel robbed of a win because of the refereeing today. We had some chances and we didn’t take them but when you look at my last contribution in the game, I did not foul the player, but the player fouled me and it should have been a penalty, but that was not the case.” Asked about the incident in question, Colomba said he did not see it properly and as such he had to take his player’s word about it. “At moments like this, when a player says something, I have to take his word after speaking to him. From the bench I cannot see very well and as the player is involved in the play I have to ask him,” he stated.
