It was another dismal Indian Super League season for East Bengal as they closed the curtain on their 2022-23 campaign with a 0-2 derby loss against city neighbors ATK Mohun Bagan. Goals from Slavko Damjanovic and Dimitri Petratos ensured that the Red and Gold finished this season languishing in tenth place.
“I don’t think we had enough moments in the game and we didn’t deserve to win it. But I felt we were lucky that we didn’t take a point out of this game,” East Bengal coach Stephen Constantine said after their Calcutta derby. loess.
Despite coach Constantine’s reiterations about how this season had its high points, the Englishman will have another chance to show his team’s mettle very soon in the form of the Super Cup.
“We will go to the Super Cup with the squad we have, but I would look at the last games we played. In those we did very well. It will be another good opportunity and at the end of the season, we will know what kind of players we need to sign,” said the 60-year-old strategist.
Time and time again, Constantine has stressed the importance of the amount of time needed before a season to prepare extensively for it.
“I learned that you have to prepare much earlier,” he replied when asked what he had learned from this ISL season.
“You can’t start in August and expect to do something. I’ve been trying to bring in Indian players and identify the foreign ones since October. We have to be quick, otherwise we’ll have to take players rejected by other clubs or search the I.” -league,” he continued.
While it seems unlikely that any major changes to the squad will take place just before the Super Cup, Constantine seems optimistic about the talks he has had with certain unnamed players who appear to be interested in joining the Kolkata outfit.
“We can take players who haven’t played anyone else, make offers or agree to contracts with players. We don’t need to wait until the season is over to do that. There are several players I’ve talked to who are interested in coming, who can make considerable differences in the team”, he said.
The Super Cup is scheduled to start from April 8, 2023.
