Mumbai City FC broke into the top four and extended their unbeaten streak in the Hero Indian Super League (Hero ISL) 2019-20 to six matches with a narrow 2-1 victory over Hyderabad FC at the Mumbai Football Arena on Sunday. Modou Sougou scored both the goals for Mumbai while Bobo scored the visitors' solitary goal in a match that also saw Sarthak Golui sent off in the 67th minute, leaving Mumbai to fend Hyderabad off with 10 men for the rest of the game.

Speaking at the post-match press conference, Mumbai head coach Jorge Costa lauded his team’s all-round performance and said, “I lost, (Paulo) Machado, Amine (Chermiti) and (Rowllin) Borges for this game. It was the first game for a couple of players, and this made it difficult for us. We had a good first half. We scored and created a few chances to score and kill the game. But the second half was not so good. We did not have the ball and then we played for almost thirty minutes with 10 men. It’s not easy because in football even if you play very good you lose.”

Speaking about their opponents on the night, Costa noted, “We played against a very good team in my opinion. As I said before, they do not deserve to be last in the league. Also, I think that this year the league has not had an easy game. All the teams are good and similar.”

Giving his take on debutant Sourav Das and midfielder Raynier Fernandes’ performance in the match, the Portuguese head coach noted, “Speaking of Raynier and Das, they had a good game. They were not perfect, but they made the game that I was hoping for. I was not expecting an extraordinary game. They were very serious like all my other players.”

This was also Mumbai’s first win of the season at home. Asked if getting it out of the way was a relief, Costa replied, “What is more important is that this is our first win at home. It is important to understand that we must be strong in front of our fans. We have sixteen points now, but we need to be focus. We all have to do our jobs. We have lost Machado for the rest of the season. He is a very important player and we are trying see what we can do knowing it is almost impossible to replace someone like Machado.”

“It will not be easy. We have been working on this, but it is almost impossible to find a player like Machado. We could bring in a similar player, but he will take time to adapt to the league and the club. This is something we have to see. We will not sign a player because we need to have seven foreigners, we will sign a player if absolutely necessary,” he added, speaking about any possible replacements for the midfield ace.

Read the Match Report here.