East Bengal FC head coach Oscar Bruzon was disappointed after they suffered a 0-1 loss against Arkadag in the first leg quarter-final of the AFC Challenge League at the Vivekananda Yuba Bharati Krirangan in Kolkata on Wednesday. 

Yazgylych Gurbanov scored the only goal of the evening in the first half for the visitors and it turned out to be the difference in the end. Saul Crespo and Messi Bouli had golden chances to score the equalizer but they could not grab them.

Bruzon rued the fact that they could not convert their chances but said they would look to bounce back in the second leg while playing away.

“Not the result we wanted, but it was a promising performance. There are 90 more minutes,” Bruzon said in the post-match press conference.

“Today, the difference was efficiency, something that we were talking a lot about during this season, being better on the boxes. They had their two or three chances, and they capitalized. We did a tremendous effort, trying everything, trying internal balls, trying set pieces, trying crosses, but we could not convert today. We have 90 more minutes, and the mood in the dressing room is perfect. It’s about getting the first goal in the away game,” he added.

The gaffer urged his players to not make silly mistakes against tough opponents like Arkadag.

“Yes, as we said, it’s not the result we wanted, and actually I also think that it’s not the result we deserved,” he stated.

“But we need to take into consideration the kind of competition that it is, that all the small details count a lot. So today in the build-up, we lost the ball, and we could see that in the two or three chances that they had close to the box, we could see the quality of the opponent’s movements and the quality of the shooting,” he continued.

East Bengal FC will face FC Arkadag in the second leg of the AFC Challenge League quarterfinal in Turkmenistan.