ISL 2021-22:"I think in the first half we were exceptional," says Mumbai City FC Head Coach Des Buckingham

Odisha FC caused a huge upset as they stunned Mumbai City FC in a 4-2 thriller in Indian Super League 2021-22.

Ariday Cabrera opened the scoring for the Kalinga Warriors as early as the fourth minute. The strike was cancelled by Ahmed Jahouh in the 10th minute. Although Igor Angulo extended the lead for the Islanders before going into the break, Jerry Mawia's consecutive brace in the 77 and 79th minutes turned things around. Jonathas De Jesus sealed the win for Odisha in the 89th minute.

Although vastly devastated, Des Buckingham kept his composure as he spoke to the media after the loss.

On the game

This was one of the heaviest losses faced by Mumbai City FC. On being asked if this was the worst defeat faced by his squad so far, Buckingham kept a rather positive approach.

"I think in the first half we were exceptional. I think we played some extremely good football to go 2-1 up, and I felt we should have been more. We played some really good attacking football, how we want to play, and we defended extremely well and that didn't continue in the second half. And that's something disappointing not just for me, but for the team. That's something that we need to address." said the boss.

On goals conceded

Mumbai City FC has played some good attacking football. However, they had conceded 10 goals in their last three games. Speaking on that the gaffer said,

"We will win games one-nil or five-four, but it's important the football we played in the first half. That's how we want to play, and it's important that we try and play that over the 90 minute period and not a 45 minute one."

He added, "If we can start doing that and showing signs of that throughout the season, I'll be very pleased, but we again need to make sure that we defend a lot better than we did this evening."

However, Des thought that the goals they conceded against Odisha were avoidable. In that regard he stated,

"I think it was a different type of game, they've had four shots on target and have scored all four goals. So the last couple of games have been transitional moments. Whereas tonight for me, it was more mistakes where we've offered opportunities on our goal."

On improvements

Buckingham claimed his team needs to improve individually and collectively to avoid such circumstances in the future. The coach was quoted saying, "think we just need to be better individually, and I think we need to be better as a collective. There's a lot of things that we need to do to prevent the ball from getting to where it does, in the goal. So again, those areas as a team we will work on and then we need to make sure individually we defend as well as we can."