It was a night to forget for the Islanders at the Fatorda Stadium as FC Goa put five goals past them. The Boss Jorge Costa spoke about his disappointment after the game and hopes that his boys can put a strong show in our next game. Below are the excerpts from his post-match press conference:
On the disappointing result against FC Goa
It's disappointing, of course. When you lose 5-0, it's difficult to explain things. But as the coach, I have to take the risks and if they don't work, I have to take the blame. For the history books, the score will read 5-0. The people who didn't see the game might think we came here for a holiday. But in my opinion, the things were different and the scoreline doesn't tell the full story.
We had a lot of chances early on, even on the corner that eventually led to FC Goa's goal. We must have had six or seven concrete chances in the first half and plenty in the second half too. I believe we played well against a team that has quality. But we completely shut down in the last 30 minutes and we gave up. Football is a serious profession. I know there are off days when you are not at your best, but we cannot give up. I will not allow my players to give up. We were good in our offensive movements but we just couldn't score. Even if we played 90 more minutes, we couldn't have scored. But it's okay to have an off day. What's not okay is that we stopped playing in the last 30 minutes. Because when you do that, it doesn't matter if we lose 3-0 or 5-0. It's important that we drop 3 points.
On the team’s confidence ahead of the next game
We know we lost the game today, and that's fine. In football, you can win or lose or draw. But when you lose 5-0, it is an issue. It's totally normal to be upset after you lose, but when you lose like this, I cannot go to the players and say “It's okay, we'll be better in the next game”. No, we can't react like this. We need to know that we did many stupid things today in the game. It is just not acceptable. My players must realize that they are professionals, not kids. Even if we lose a game, we must be able to look each other in the eye and say that we gave our best. That is not the case tonight. Football is my life and it is their life too and they must do better.
On the strategy against FC Goa and the execution
We had a fair idea of how Goa will play, building from the back. They were going to take risks and we wanted to press them. For the first half, we did a good job at it. If we had scored early on, things could have been very different. But there is no point dwelling on the 'if's and the 'but's in football, especially after losing 5-0. Maybe things would've been different had we scored those 3-4 chances, maybe we would've gone home with three points. But at this level, if you don't take your chances and make the mistakes like we did, you don't deserve anything but zero points.
