‘We were trying to avoid injuries with substitutions’

The short pre-season that preceded the season meant that Bengaluru FC were forced to make substitutions on Sunday in their Indian Super League (ISL) match against FC Goa despite them needing one more goal to win the match, according to coach Carles Cuadrat.

Cuadrat said that he was tempted to not make any changes, which included taking off talismanic forward Sunil Chhetri and goal scorer Cleiton Silva while the score was 2-2, but had to do it so as to avoid injuries.

“We were trying to avoid injuries. You don’t want to touch anything when you are winning but we have to make substitutions to give some break to the players. Unfortunately, in just three minutes they got two goals so there was no time to make more changes. But the guys did well and I feel it was a fair result,” Cuadrat said on Star Sports after the match.

Bengaluru were leading 2-0 despite not having much of the ball untill 66th minute after which Goa scored twice in three minutes to draw level.

“We were working for the three points but Goa are a great team, they can play some wonderful passes. We were doing our best considering that the players had a short pre-season and tend to get tired quickly,” said Cuadrat.

“It was the match plan, to hit them on the counter attack knowing that they are going to have more possession. We took advantage of things that we are good at like set pieces. I think we were good until the last pass. We did well everywhere but only in the last pass we were lacking. We will keep working on that.”

FC Goa coach Juan Ferrando also said that he is happy with the result considering the fact that the players are not yet ready to play the full 90 minutes. “In the press conference before this season I said that we need time. It’s not just our players but also players of all teams had short pre-seasons and so the players are not 100 per cent ready to play 90 minutes,” said Ferrando.