Mumbai City FC handed a drubbing to NorthEast United FC (5-1) in match no. 23 of the Indian Super League (ISL) at the DY Patil Sports Stadium on Wednesday.
The crowd came in huge numbers and they were treated with a hat-trick by none other than Sunil Chhetri. The other two goals were scored by Sony Norde and Mumbai City FC skipper Frantz Bertin. Boithang Haokip scored the solitary goal for the highlanders from a free-kick.
Nicolas Anelka and Oscar Bruzon were ecstatic after their third straight win at home. After the home team thrashed NorthEast United FC, they moved up to the second position in the ISL 2015 points table. A few days ago, they were reeling at the bottom of the table. Bruzon emphasised on concentrating on the match against Atletico de Kolkata and reaching the 20 points mark as well.
"I want to be honest, I know that now we have a lot of noise, we are having a run of three wins, I know we are second on the table. But [right now] we are only focusing on Atlético de Kolkata [Mumbai's next opponents] and the main objective of our team is reaching 20 points as soon as possible and I can tell you this will not be easy because we need to win three more games. We have only three more games at home so we want to keep working," Mumbai City FC assistant coach Oscar Bruzon told the reporters on Wednesday after the match.
"The main thing about the combination is that when things are not going very well, they understand how to retrieve, how to help the team and they play very good in attack. But I don't want to talk only about the attacking part of the team. Because the defence today played a very important role."
The highlanders coch Cesar Farias said that the penalties that were offered to the home side opened up the game and that also brought down his men's confidence level. They would want to leave this loss behind and look forward to their upcoming fixtures in ISL 2015.
"When you lose like that, not much analysis you do. The team was doing pretty well, until first, in fact two penalties. After the first penalty, the team responded. The team adjusted to the situation and got back to the game. The second penalty, I think, brought the guys down emotionally. There were two handballs, but we're not saying that they weren't penalties. We're saying there were no fouls. If you see the videos, you'll see there is no willingness in the handballs," NorthEast United FC gaffer Cesar Farias told the mediapersons after the match.
"But they [Mumbai City FC] were a little more solid today. We'll have to see and analyse the situations in the game and how they impacted the performance. We did not concede goals until the penalties. The penalties were the reasons the game got open. We're not taking credit away from him. Based on the results, people might think there was a good and a bad team out there. We know it's not like that and our job is to move forward. And leave this in the past."
Watch the full highlights of the game between Mumbai City FC and NorthEast United FC here.
