Chennaiyin FC head coach Thomas Brdaric was delighted after his team registered a 2-0 win against East Bengal FC at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, Chennai on Sunday. The first half ended without a goal but Chungnunga scored an own goal in the second half.
Rahim Ali then scored the second goal of the night for the Marina Machans to help them secure three points. Brdaric stated it was fully satisfactory and they enjoyed the much-needed win.
“In football, we need a healthy dressing room. This is something that sets us apart from other clubs that we never give up, we’re always positive. I told the players, from the first day, that it was going to be a challenge. We have been creating chances but didn’t take them at the right moments. We made foolish mistakes, the players have to learn very fast that we have to be organized in every second of the play during the 90 minutes. In today’s match we were playing with pressure and to face them (East Bengal FC) here and to win, it’s fully satisfactory and we enjoyed the win,” Brdaric said.
Meanwhile, El Khayati was substituted in the 37th minute by the German after the talisman felt discomfort in his hamstring.
“We changed him (Abdenasser El Khayati) because he felt discomfort in his hamstring. I talked to him and he told me that it’s not as serious as before, we’ll do the scans and see how it’ll turn out and we’re hoping we can get him back before the next fixture,” he added.
Brdaric admitted that his team was not up to the mark in the first half but they were able to bounce back in the second half. The two-time champions took four shots on target.
“The style that we play with is proactive and to push players ahead. Sometimes in the first half it was too calm, we didn’t play fast through our centre backs and it was sloppy and poor but how we dealt with the second balls was much better and I also saw improvements when we sent (Anirudh) Thapa to the centre and it’s very important for us to recover for the next match against FC Goa,” stated Brdaric.
He concluded: “This is game management, this is the work of my coaching staff. We made the right changes at halftime with Vafa (Hakhamaneshi) and (Rahim) Ali. We changed the system of being compact and we didn’t allow much. We have height with Vafa, that’s something that we missed in the first half and that’s why he (Vafa Hakhamaneshi) has featured in our first XI regularly, we need him for defensive set pieces but we also need Nasser (Abdenasser El Khayati). We changed our settings a little bit and I’m satisfied that it worked well.”
Chennaiyin FC will next take on FC Goa at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, Goa on Thursday.
