Nelo Vingada had his first taste of defeat with NorthEast United FC in Hero Indian Super League 2016 after a 1-0 loss to Mumbai City FC at the Mumbai Football Arena on Friday. It was the Highlanders’ first loss of the season and bought an end to their perfect start to Hero ISL 2016, which had seen them beat Kerala Blasters FC 1-0 and FC Goa 2-0 at the Indira Gandhi Athletic Stadium in Guwahati. However, Vingada didn’t seem too dispirited following his team’s defeat on Friday and instead chose to focus on the performance of his players as opposed to the result.“Today was a very hard and intense game especially for us as it was our third game in six days. To be honest, I was expecting more difficulties for our side. I must congratulate Mumbai City FC because they won. One mistake was we gave Mumbai City FC the penalty in a very easy situation. Of all the other things, I believe that we are building a good team with very good organisation.” Vingada told reporters at the post-match press-conference.He added: “So I am proud of the players even though we made some mistakes, missed a couple of chances… But this is football, these mistakes happen because we play with men and not with robots and machines. I am leaving with this performance and not the result. I am leaving Mumbai more optimistic than I was even before we lost.”Mumbai City FC’s marquee player Diego Forlan scored the only goal of the game from the penalty spot in 55th minute after Reagan Singh committed a foul on Pronay Halder inside the box. When asked about the sequence of events in the build-up to the penalty, Vingada said: “It was an easy situation. We had a couple of chances to control and clear the danger, but when the ball got to Reagan he fell down and we conceded the penalty. However, I’ve seen this in bigger teams as well, players make the same mistake. We can make many mistakes but usually such mistakes do not happen in my team, because the players know that when they are playing under pressure they must clear the area as soon possible. So of course there were 2-3 mistakes that led to the penalty. Also our goalkeeper almost saved the penalty. But this is football and hence it is the No.1 sport in the world.”The 63-year-old also said that in spite of the result NorthEast were the better team on the night and were heading in the right direction. “Each one has their own opinion. Honestly if you see we created better opportunities to score. Honestly I feel we were better. However, this is not important. We didn’t score and Mumbai City FC won. So as per the result it was Mumbai City FC as the better team… But I think if we play well like we played today we can win and get more points. I believe playing this way, we are going in the right direction.”
