Odisha FC narrowly lost out to Bengaluru FC at the Shree Shiv Chhatrapati Sports Complex Stadium in Pune on Wednesday. Josep Gombau’s charges reacted well to going down in the first half and created quite a few chances in the second 45. The final touch, however, was unfortunately missing from their game, which meant they had to settle for their third loss in Hero Indian Super League (Hero ISL) 2019-20.

After the match, the Odisha boss spoke at the media gathering and maintained that he was proud with the efforts of his players. Gombau said, “I am satisfied with the performance of the players. The result is not the best and as a professional coach, you want to win because that’s the way people will evaluate your job, with the wins and losses. (But) I think that we played a very good game.”

“I think that we had our chances to win the game also. I think the first half was equal, they scored from a set-piece. They are a strong team and work a lot at this. Their coach does very well in this aspect. In the second half, I think that they were just trying to launch the ball. We had more of the ball. We had some chances from set-pieces (as well).”

“We hit the post, we had two more chances for Marcos (Tebar) and Aridane (Santana). I think that we are going out with no points, but the way we played was very good. We have to (consider) that we played with a lot of young players,” Gombau added.

Sharing his thoughts on the number of chances his team had, the Spaniard expressed, “It is football. You have to put the ball in the net. At the end, the team that wins the game is the one who puts the ball in the net. As a coach, I can’t say anything to any player. I think that everyone worked very hard and our game plan worked because we had a few chances and I think that we competed very well against Bengaluru. We will take the positives from this and start to think about the next game.”

The 43-year-old then looked ahead to Odisha’s next match against Hyderabad and stated, “The game (against Hyderabad FC) will be on next Wednesday. We are going to Mumbai. We will have three-four days of training there and will come back here. I am sure we will be ready to play that game and win.”

Read the Match Report here.