Kerala Blasters FC registered their fifth defeat of the 2015 Hero Indian Super League on Tuesday evening when they lost 3-2 to defending champions Atlético de Kolkata at home but head coach Terry Phelan was undeterred and insisted his team wasn’t out of semifinal contention yet.“I'm not giving up and my boys won't give up. If I was going to give up, I’d rather walk out of this door right now. Anybody can beat anybody in this league. We've got to pick ourselves up. Got to go away from home. We've got three odd games away and we've got to see what we can do. The pressure is on the other teams. We know what we have to do. The pressure is on the other teams,” Phelan told reporters after the match at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in Kochi.Antonio German, who came on as a substitute in the first half, scored his second goal in the 85th minute to make it 2-2 but Arata Izumi scored in the dying moments of the match to help ATK register their fourth win in nine matches. When asked whether getting defensive after the equaliser would have been a better idea, Phelan said: “We want to attack, we want to win the game, we got thousands of fans out there, we can't just sit back. We wanted to stick with the same approach but tiredness crept in you can only do so much as a coach. Let's be fair to my lads…”Kolkata fielded five midfielders in the match and reined back Kerala who had a record 32 shots on goal against FC Pune City in their last match. On their opposition’s strategy, Phelan said: “Teams have seen us last week and they've seen what we can do. And [ATK] they lost last week they came with a five-man midfield. And it’s always hard to play it down but you’ve got to have intelligence on the ball, pick your passes. It's not as if we didn't do that, we did do that and we caused them trouble, so why step back. Keep going and that's why football is such a beautiful game. It's just unlucky someone had to lose and that too at home.”The former Ireland defender was also sorry to have disappointed fans who turned up in large numbers. “The crowd is absolutely magnificent. We are not going to get a better crowd, it's absolutely fantastic and you know I'm very sorry, could not get a point today but that's football and like we said earlier anybody can beat anybody…We want to be entertaining and all. We want to try and win games and that's why the crowd comes to watch us.”Phelan, however, heaped praise on English striker German. “It's a great performance, he just showed you what he could do. He's a big strong athlete. He just needs a little confidence and that's why we have to give him his time and build him up. He's got his time to get out there and show. He kept his confidence high and he scored two goals and that's what we're looking for from him,” Phelan said.
