Mumbai City FC suffered their first away loss of the Hero Indian Super League (Hero ISL) 2019-20 season after going down 2-0 to Odisha FC at the Kalinga Stadium in Bhubaneswar on Saturday. Aridane Santana and Xisco Hernandez scored the two goals for the home team on the night. The result also means the Islanders drop out of the top four, with Odisha taking over the fourth spot in the points table.

At the post-match press conference, Mumbai City assistant coach Marco Leite assessed the loss and opined, “In my opinion, it wasn’t a good game for us. In fact, it was probably the worst game we have played this season so far. In the first half, we created some chances and Odisha created some chances too. But it’s like this in a lot of matches. Even in the matches we lose, we create a lot of chances but cannot score.”

“In the second half, things changed a little bit. The team was slow and predictable. When we create chances, we need to score. If you don’t score, you lose. We wanted to win this game and take three points to Mumbai. We still have six games and will fight to finish top four,” he continued.

Asked how the team will be dealing with dropping out of the top four heading into a crucial phase in the season, Leite declared, “We will continue to work like we have done till now. The team works hard every day. We have nothing we can say to the players because they work very hard. We are upset about the result but the only thing we can do now is continue to fight and train. We will dedicate ourselves to making the top four by the end of the league phase and we will do it.

Read the Match Report here.