Zico pleased with the last gasp victory; Materazzi unhappy with the referee's decisions
ZICO COULD NOT BE HAPPIER than this on FC Goa's last home game of season. He could not hide his joy after the win and speaking to the press after the game said,
“Football deserves this kind of experience and emotion, and I am very happy. I want to thank the fans that came to support us. I told the players at half-time that we have got to respect these fans who have come here to support us, so we have got to go out there and do our best, and again I told my players that football finishes only when the referee blows the final whistle. I told them if we keep our cool, we can win and that's what happened today,”
Chennaiyin felt robbed of the one point that they could have taken as a consolation to their dissapointing season. Talking about the game Materazzi said,
“Our whole season has been like this and I’m glad it is over. I never say who is the best on the pitch but I will tell you who was the worst on the field, it was the referee. The injury time was three minutes and we conceded in the 94th minute after a foul from Gregory. You can still see the studmarks on Daniel Lalhlimpuia’s leg, so that makes me sad. We at least deserved a draw or a victory. But I want to congratulate Daniel, Jerry Lalrinzula and Anrirudh Thapa for their performance,”
Replying to a question if he would be coming back for another season answered,
“I don't have any proposal from other teams. Tomorrow I have a meeting with the owner and the president of the club. We will pass the assessment report for the season. We will also discuss what the future holds for us. So I really don't need to sign anything as I keep my word. I told them that I have had three years here, I just now need to know what their plans are for the future, so we need to sit and talk about it. We need to sit and talk as we will have to look at the new season with a new format. Many decisions were not taken properly this year, so we need to see what we did wrong and how we can make amends.”
Materazzi explaining the season gone by saying,
“What is different this season is that there are some points missing and it is clearly our fault, as you know we conceded late against Kolkata in the 86rd minute, against Pune in the 83rd minute, against Mumbai in the 88th minute, against NorthEast United deep in injury time. If you count it’s a lot of points that have been wasted. It is the reason why we didn’t qualify,”
Sahil Tavora scored the winning goal in literally the last minute of the game. He was with Coach Zico in the press conference and shared his experience of the night saying,
“It has been a great experience for me and it has been a great learning process and it is a stepping stone for me and I have learnt so much from different situations, and every day I try to learn as much as I can from the coach and the technical staff, and do what they instruct me to do. I am glad my entire family was here and I am happy that I could share this wonderful moment with them and I am very happy.”
Leading by example that many Indian players must feature in the starting 11 as much as possible, Materazzi showed it all season how it is done. Talking about the same shared,
“I think if a club does a really good job like our club does, if they do everything that they can to put in these really talented players. If we didn’t push them out today, you wouldn’t have seen these young talented players, so I urge the whole ISL to bet on Indian talent. Overall, I’m not happy with the results of my club because I hate to lose. I think we have really good young talent in the team and we can start over again with these talented players,”
Tavora, on his performances and learinings from the season said,
"I think for me this is a great stepping stone and I am one of the young players in the side and it has been a great learning process for me under the coach and I have learnt a lot from the downs as much as I have learnt from the ups,”
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