ISL 2022-23: This win will surely give us confidence – Odisha FC head coach Josep Gombau

Odisha FC head coach Josep Gombau feels the win against East Bengal FC will give them a lot of confidence after they won by 3-1 at the Kalinga Stadium, Bhubaneswar on Saturday. The Kalinga Warriors are now at the fifth place in the standings with seven wins, one draw and five losses.

Cleiton Silva gave a lead to the visitors in the 10th minute but Diego Mauricio equalised for the home team in the 22nd minute. Nandhakumar Sekar then gave a 2-1 lead to his team at the stroke of half-time whereas Mauricio scored his second of the night to give three crucial points to his team.

Gombau was delighted with the win and heaped praise on his players after a complete show at their home turf.

“We are very happy with the win, we deserved the victory today. We came back after conceding the first goal and the players showed their mentality. We need to be satisfied with the result, the win was much needed because we didn’t have a win in the last four matches. This win will surely give us confidence,” Gombau stated at the post-match press conference.

Meanwhile, Gombau got Saul Crespo and Osama Malik back into the playing XI and he was pleased with the performance of the former.

“For sure, Saul (Crespo) is very important for us. He missed the last three games and he did well with the comeback. I’m happy that he’s back on the pitch. As coaches, it’s easy for us to do the job if we have more players available and it keeps things competitive within the team. I’m happy that Saul is back with us.”

Furthermore, Mauricio continued his good show for Odisha FC as he has scored four goals in the last two matches. The Brazilian has scored a total of seven goals in the ongoing Hero ISL in 13 matches.

“He (Diego Mauricio) did fantastically (well). He scored two goals and I swapped him early because I wanted to give minutes to Pedro (Martin) but I saw the hunger in Diego as he wanted to score more goals is something very good. With his performance, I think he deserved more minutes and it was my mistake to take him out that early in the match,” Gombau stated.

Gombau revealed they will take one game at a time and will try to achieve the small goals in order to go all the way.

“We go game by game. It’ll be a difficult game like every single game. We will go there with the mentality to get a good result. This win will bring us confidence and our objective is to get into the playoffs and this win puts us closer to that. We have three more games here at home and then four away games. It’s a moment to go game by game and the match against Bengaluru FC is going to be a very good game,” he mentioned.

Odisha FC will next take on Bengaluru FC at the Sree Kanteerava Stadium, Bengaluru on 14th January.