East Bengal FC head coach Oscar Bruzon expressed pride in his players' performance despite their loss to Odisha FC in the Indian Super League (ISL) on Thursday.

East Bengal FC faced a heartbreaking defeat after taking an early lead through Lal Chungnunga, only for Odisha FC's Jerry Mawihmingthanga to equalize shortly after. The situation worsened for the home side when Jeakson Singh received a second yellow card, leaving them a man down. Odisha FC capitalized on the advantage, with Hugo Boumous scoring a late winner.

This marked East Bengal FC’s seventh defeat of the season and ended their three-game unbeaten streak, which included two wins. Bruzon felt Mawihmingthanga’s goal shifted the momentum in Odisha FC’s favor and believed his team deserved more from the match.

“We could have got a goal in the second half. The bad luck is that the player of Odisha FC on the right wing (Mawihmingthanga), he was trying to do a cross and he scored a goal in the corner of the goal, so I think that was the game changer. With the 1-0 (scoreline), with the performance and attitude of our players, we would have never lost the game. With the 1-1 (scoreline), we took a little bit of risk. We wanted to win the game but there was nothing bad about it and the difference was made by two foreigners of Odisha FC (Boumous and Diego Mauricio). One good action from them, one good connection, one good association they could score,” Bruzon said in the post-match press conference.

The Spaniard also pointed out that the injury to Madih Talal affected their chances but emphasized that his team’s performance was better than the opposition’s.

He added: “On the other side, the difficulty we had with the foreign players with the injury, with Madih (Talal) that was supposed to be one of the key players today. We will wait for the medical evaluation tomorrow (on Friday). It seems he has a problem on the knee. So I don’t know if we can have more problems. It’s beyond our limits. I don’t know if it’s frustration but I prefer to talk about the good performance of our players with a top team like Odisha FC. They are a team that is very settled. I feel that today they were not better than us on the pitch.”

Talal’s injury adds to East Bengal FC’s growing list of absentees. Striker Dimitrios Diamantakos and midfielder Saul Crespo were not part of the matchday squad, while defender Hector Yuste, who was named on the bench and was doubtful for the game, did not feature.

Bruzon did not confirm whether the injured players would be available for their upcoming game against Punjab FC but admitted the midfield remains a concern.

“From the first day of practice tomorrow (on Friday) when we make the proper evaluation with the doctors and the physios, we will get to know if they (Diamantakos, Crespo, Yuste) will be available but it’s very clear that we have a problem in the centre of the pitch with so many players playing in that area.. We tried to minimize the times of recovery because the team is now undergoing a real tough situation,” he revealed.