ISL: "I said go out there and play," says North East Head Coach Khalid Jamil

North East United bounces back from their horrendous loss against Hyderabad FC with a 2-0 victory as a dismal SC East Bengal keeps looking for their first win of this season's Indian Super League. Khalid Jamil's men get the better of Manolo Diaz's men thanks to the second-half goals from V.P Suhair and P.Flottman. The winning gaffer faced the press to answer questions after their second win of the season.

Half Time turnaround

East Bengal vs. North East United's first half was lacklustre, to say the least. Sitting at the bottom of the table, both teams were looking for a win to gain some momentum for the remainder of their campaigns, but neither of them was even able to get a shot on target during the first forty-five minutes. In the second half, however, the highlanders took charge of the match pretty quickly. They dominated the possessions as they love to do and scored two goals in quick succession to register their second victory of the season. When asked about his "pep talk" in the half time, he said,

"I didn't tell them anything. I said go out there and play, try to score goals and you will get it, but we have to try to hit the target. You have to play as a team and I think that worked."

Thoughts on the game

This match was an important one for Khalid Jamil's team. The Highlanders did not get their desired start to the campaign curtsy to their injury problem which seems like a never-ending nightmare for them as Hernan Santana is their latest foreigner to fall victim to it. When asked about his thoughts on the match, Khalid Jamil opened up about his tactics and last-minute changes in the game plan due to their last-minute injury horror,

"Actually at the starting of the match we lost Hernan today because he got injured during the warm-up. We added Justin and so defensively we decided not to open and just stay back I told Lakra and Gujinder not to go up in order to help Flottman and Justin because he was playing his second game and he did a wonderful job. I told Imran to stay with Khassa and another thing I told Mathias to play as a free player joined with Mapuia."

Reasons for injury pileup

Hernan Santana is the latest addition to the Highlander's long list of injured Key players. In this season, injuries have been the biggest problem for the Indian gaffer of the ISL so far, when asked about the reason behind this absurd amount of injuries, Khalid Jamil said,

"You see everybody is working hard and the matches are also in very close succession. Maybe we are not getting the desired recovery time but there is no complaint from the team. Everyone is working very hard so that is a good thing."