New Delhi: Delhi Dynamos opened their account in the second season of the Indian Super League (ISL) as they beat Chennaiyin FC 1-0 in a home game on Thursday here at the Jawaharlal Nehru stadium, and coach Robert Carlos was happy with the team's performance.
"I don't want to single out who was the best player as team performance matters for me. All the players played very well. The performance was brilliant," the Brazilian reckoned.
Carlos, however, admitted that his star trio remain the "leaders" of his Delhi Dynamos squad.
"Yes, John [Arne] Risse, [Florent] Malouda and [Hans] Mulder are leaders of my team but everyone played superbly today. These three are the players who are the leaders and everyone looks at them for advice. They are the reference to the team," the former Real Madrid defender said.
The Brazilian said his defence did well to never allow Chennaiyin a look at goal.
"Chennaiyin didn't have even one shot on target. We used the speed of Dos Santos, Richard Gadze and Florent Malouda very well," he said.
Carlos was also optimistic that goals will start flowing for Delhi as the tournament goes by, and he is not at all worried about very few goals in the first two matches for the team from the capital city.
"It was a good match. Fans want to see goals but we have just started the tournament. Let the players gel together and we will score more in the future. They are just getting to know each other," he said.
Delhi dominated the first half as Chennai really struggled to get going in the match that saw a total of five yellow cards and an injury to Delhi Dynamos midfielder Santos. Delhi defence looked solid and well organised throughout the 90 minutes, and Carlos was very happy with the physical nature in which Delhi played.
"My team was strong physically. We could have scored more goals had we taken our chances. All the time they attacked, we were very well positioned. We did excellently well today but we have to improve in the future games," Carlos told reporters in the post-match conference.
Lots of players were booked in Thursday' encounter and it was quite a physical game. When asked whether the referee made mistakes during the game, Carlos said: "I don't want to talk about referees. Football is a contact sport. There were lots of fouls and he gave more decisions in favour of Chennai than Delhi. But that's not my responsibility, federations are responsible. This is ISL; it's their responsibly not mine. Sometimes I might get nervous because I don't like what I see sometimes."
Delhi were without the services of star striker Robin Singh and midfielders Francis Fernandez and Snehraj Singh as they are currently with the Indian national team for the World Cup qualifiers.
When asked why the ISL is continuing when every other league is having a break because of the FIFA qualifiers, Carlos said, "These three players are very important for me but they are important for India as well. When international matches happen in Brazil, every other league stops but ISL is a new league - everyone is looking at us. Take it easy. Everything will be all right with time," Carlos concluded.
Comments
0 comment