ISL 2022-23: We don’t talk about it being a semi-final – Des Buckingham on Mumbai City FC vs Bengaluru FC

Mumbai City FC head coach Des Buckingham has stated that his team is all set for the playoff stages. The Islanders ticked the right boxes throughout the league stage and they have been the team to beat in the ongoing season of the Hero Indian Super League.

Mumbai had an 18-match unbeaten streak but they were beaten in their last two league stage matches against Bengaluru FC and East Bengal FC when Buckingham decided to give chances to his bench strength.

Despite these two losses, Mumbai City FC finished at the top of the points table with 46 points after 14 wins, four draws, and two losses. The club will face Bengaluru FC in the first leg of the first semifinal at the Mumbai Football Arena on Tuesday.

“We don’t really talk about it being a semifinal. We don’t talk about pressure or confidence. We just concentrate on our performance. We went on to win the league without losing a game. But we talked about our own performances and we’ve got a way that we work,” he said.

“We’ve got internal performance measures that we try and meet every game and how we can, if we can deliver on those measures as often as possible we hope the results will follow. That is certainly what has started to show. It’s just reflecting back now on the 20 games, looking at what has gone well and making sure that we continue, trying to prepare ourselves as well as we can for the next game because we’ve shown already in the 20 now if we can do that then we’ll put ourselves in the best position to go and secure the double,” he added.

After winning the League Shield, the Englishman has set his target of going all the way in the tournament.

“There are people who play a lot in their careers and maybe don’t win anything in terms of silverware. So, for us to be able to do that while still being able to chase more, you know, there’s still a lot more that we want to achieve this year and winning the Shield is a good start. It’s certainly not something we’re going to sit on and try to be happy with,” he said.

“We can be happy with what we’ve achieved but we’ve got some excitement about what is directly in front of us now. We are very much looking forward to the playoff games. We made some decisions in the last games to rest players that were on cards and also potential injuries, whilst also giving a lot of our young players an opportunity to showcase their skills and the hunger each member of this squad has to go and win each game. The good thing is we now have everybody available from our squad for that semifinal which is very important to us, especially since how important our squad has been for us this year,” he commented.

Mumbai City FC had beaten the Blues by 4-0 earlier in the season but Simon Grayson’s team had recently won by 2-1 in the reverse fixture.