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After the heart-breaking defeat to archrivals ATK Mohun Bagan, SC East Bengal will be looking to brush past the agony when they take on Chennaiyan FC in a Indian Super League encounter at the Tilak Maidan Stadium on Wednesday.
Chennaiyan FC sit in seventh position in the ISL table, with 18 points from 13 matches, but a win could take them up as far as the third spot. On the other hand, SC East Bengal remain in the 11th spot, with nine points from 14 games.
SC East Bengal coach Mario Rivera, however, is pretty confident that the defeat in the derby will not be a factor in the Chennaiyan FC match. “For professional teams, when you lose a match, you have to keep the good things, eliminate the bad things, and start from scratch in the next match. It’ll be no different for us,” Rivera said when asked about how the team is coping with the derby loss.
Mario Rivera, who won his first match in charge this season but ended up losing the next two, believes that the team does not need any extra motivation, as they have been playing good football. “It’s easy to motivate any team after a very good match. We did many things well in the last match, the players know that we are on the right track, so it’s not a difficult task at all. We are always thinking in terms of winning the next match, and we will try to achieve the same target in the Chennaiyan FC game as well,” Rivera said.
SC East Bengal has dropped points from winning positions in six games, with two of those games ending in defeat. When asked if the reason pertains to lack of confidence, Rivera dismissed the speculation. “The confidence of a team is more related to the performance than the results. Sometimes you can play well and lose, and vice-versa. Our performance is much better than the results, so the players are in a good space mentally,” the Spaniard said.
Rivera also made it clear that a team like SC East Bengal is always looking to win every match and will play all the remaining games with the same goal in mind. The Spaniard sounded optimistic and excited about the attacking combination of Marcelo Ribeiro dos Santos and Antonio Perosevic. “Marcelo and Perosevic’s combination is one to watch out for. It was difficult at the start because Marcelo cannot speak English, but they are starting to understand each other now. If we had this combination from the start of the season, the story may have been a whole lot different,” Rivera said.
