Not thinking of semi-finals, say Garcia, Habas

With his trademark shrug of the shoulders Antonio Lopez Habas, the Atletico de Kolkata coach, accepted that his team put in an underpar performance on Tuesday. “I agree that we didn’t play well today. In the last game (against Chennaiyin FC) here we had done much better but didn’t win. Sometimes you don’t play well and still win. That’s football,” he said, at the postmatch media conference.

Asked if the win was a relief coming as it did after almost one month, Habas said: “For me the important thing is to try and get three points always. It doesn’t matter if it’s home or away. We have been on the top of the table from the beginning and after nine rounds we are still on the top.”

Neither the coach nor his captain, Luis Garcia, wanted to make too much of this victory in the context of qualifying for the semi-finals “We are not looking at anything beyond the next game (in Kochi on Friday),” he said. Habas also didn’t want to make much of the growing criticism here about his sticking to a singlestriker formation. “I think we have a good squad and, more importantly, as far as I know we can’t sign any other players. Having said that, we can say we are not missing any kind of player,” he said.

Garcia said the goal would give him confidence. “When strikers don’t get goals, they lose confidence. We have been creating chances in all our games but not taking them. Today, we took one and that was important.” He said the goal happened because they followed Habas’ instruction to press higher. “We were very far from the goal in the first half,” said Garcia. North East United FC’s coach Ricki Herbert termed the goal sloppy. “The goal we let in was sloppy.”