NorthEast United FC head coach Cesar Farias understands the importance of their Hero Indian Super League Season 2 encounter against Mumbai City FC at the Indira Gandhi Athletic Stadium in Guwahati on Friday. The Highlanders, who suffered a 4-1 defeat in their previous match against Kerala Blasters FC, have 13 points from 10 matches and if they lose against Mumbai City, a team equally desperate to win, their semi-final chances will take a big blow.“We are going to confront this game like we have been confronting every game, with lot of seriousness and readiness to play the long 90 minutes. We’ve had some rest from the long 16 days of travel and we are paying attention to all the details ahead of this very important match,” Farias told reporters on Thursday.NorthEast’s opponents Mumbai also lost 7-0 to FC Goa in their last match and Farias said they will be wary of Nicolas Anelka and co. on Friday.“All the teams of the league are very hungry for a win at the moment. With the exception of maybe Goa, almost all other teams are in need of a win. The games are very emotional and those, who get the better of these emotions, are going to emerge victorious. Every game is a decisive one in this final stretch of the league,” the Venezuelan said.NorthEast started off their Season 2 campaign on a poor note with three successive defeats but then they came back with a bang with a string of good performances before things fell apart again following the defeat against Kerala. Farias listed the reasons behind his team’s inconsistency.“You all know that the conditions in ISL are very unique with lots of long travels and back-to-back games. This year the quantity of Indian players is higher than the last year and the average age of the international players have decreased a little bit compared to the last year. All these have made the intensity of the game higher when compared to the first year of the league,” he said.Farias continued: “That makes fatigue a big factor because the more intense the games are, the quicker the players get tired. These situations also give birth to certain new conditions. For example when Mumbai played Goa they only had three days’ rest whereas Goa had a nine-day rest and this can be a big difference in the performance of the players.“And it’s not an excuse but against Kerala we had one less day of rest and we had to recover from all those days of travel and we played three tough games away. Against Chennai, it was difficult to play in the rain and we had to take a break too because of the thunder. Playing on a wet surface is heavy for the legs. All those conditions when added up with players going out on national duties as well may seem like small details but they do affect the results.”
