Mumbai City FC head coach Des Buckingham was delighted after his team bested Odisha FC by 4-2 at the Kalinga Stadium, Bhubaneshwar on Monday. Odisha FC has enjoyed great success in their home conditions and Buckingham was happy with the fact they achieved what they wanted out of the game.
Chhangte scored a brace for the Islanders whereas Bipin Singh and Noguera also found the back of the net to give a convincing win to their team. Diego Mauricio scored two goals for the home team but it was not enough for them as the tourists dominated in the second half of the game.
Mumbai took a total of nine shots on target and had 58% possession in the game.
“I’m extremely happy. We know, coming here, you know, that the teams have come here and tried to leave with three points and play well, and they’ve struggled. And for me, I thought the performance was very good, especially the second half, I thought the individual performances especially but as a team, we stuck true to what we wanted,” stated Buckingham in the official post-match press conference.
Meanwhile, Chhangte continued his good form as he has now scored seven goals and has provided two assists in the 12 matches. The youngster is now the joint-highest goal scorer of the league with El Khayati.
“I think that Chhangte has now become the joint-top goalscorer in the league. We had spoken about trying to get Indian goalscorers and players in those types of charts and the contribution that they’re providing to us to be successful was so important,” he said.
“There’s a reason why they start every game, it’s because they continually perform, whether it’s the performances with the ball, whether it’s the assist that they create, the chance they create, or even scoring goals like Chhangte did tonight,” he added.
Buckingham highlighted that they will look to continue the good show for the rest of the season as they have unbeaten so far.
“We’re doing our best to try and play that way every game and be as good as we can. There’s still a lot we need to do. And you know, we have eight more games to make sure we address some of those areas,” he said.
Mumbai City FC will next take on Kerala Blasters FC at the Mumbai Football arena, Mumbai on Sunday.
