Mumbai City FC will square off against Delhi Dynamos FC in Match 20 of the Hero Indian Super League (Hero ISL) 2018-19 at the Mumbai Football Arena on Saturday. Both teams have had a forgettable start to the season and will be desperately looking for all three points.

Ahead of the fixture, Mumbai head coach Jorge Costa took on his media duties at the pre-match press conference. He admitted that the way his team slumped to a 5-0 loss to FC Goa in their last match was simply unacceptable but there were also positives to be taken away from the match. “We made a lot of mistakes. That’s why we lost 5-0 but we did some good things too. In the first half, players did almost everything that I asked. We pressed high, we won the ball and we had clear chances to score, a lot of them. We made mistakes and didn’t score. At this level, you must be more serious. We must respect first our job. Second, we must respect the work. Third, we must also respect the fans and we cannot give up. What happened in the last 15-20 minutes, I was ashamed because they gave up. As a professional football player, you cannot give up,” he said.

When asked if the showing in Goa will prompt him to make changes in his back line, Costa said, “This is what we have. I don’t know if I will change one. I must see how the players recover. But also, I don’t have a lot of options. I’m trying to pick the best players.”

Delhi assistant coach Mridul Banerjee, on the other hand, played down his team’s poor run in the past few matches and insisted that the team will be up and running within the next two matches. “Our team is a very good side. We have a very good combination on the Indian and foreign players. We played well and created so many goal scoring chances, but we failed to convert them into goals. That is the only problem. But we are working on that, and I think within one or two matches, it will be sorted.”

He also said that Mumbai’s heavy defeat against Goa won’t play any part in the upcoming match. “It is a new day, new match. So, I think that result (against Goa) will not affect the performance of the Mumbai FC team,” he opined.