Jamshedpur FC’s Antonio Iriondo – Bad refereeing changes games

Jamshedpur FC suffered a heavy defeat at the hands of Indian Super League (ISL) leaders ATK on Sunday at home.

The Men of Steel are plagued by several injury problems and thus coach Antonio Iriondo was forced to once again experiment in the team’s backline. He fielded young defender Sandip Mandi in the left-back position and it was from Mandi’s misplaced pass that Roy Krishna scored the opening goal.

“We have been trying different things at left-back but nothing seems to work. We have to try something different. (Sandip) Mandi is part of the squad. We tried him today. Obviously it didn’t work as good as we would have wanted but it was not the only change. We also took the risk with (Sumeet) Passi as the right-back and he had a great match.

“I think in his first pass, Mandi did a big mistake but he is just 17 years old, he needs time. The thing is that we don’t have any alternatives in that position so we have to try different things,” said the Jamshedpur boss.

The Spaniard spoke about how certain refereeing decisions went against his team. He was not happy about Jitendra Singh’s Sending off and also claimed that his team should have won two penalties.

“We played against a very good team. We are not taking credit out of them but once again we have been in a bad situation like they had made seven fouls before we made our first foul. (Sumeet) Passi made our first foul in the midfield, no risk. They also made similar fouls but we got the yellow cards. The situation was we had one player sent off. When you are losing 3-0 and you are one man down it is bad. I am not blaming referees but this kind of things change matches.

“We are tired of feeling this way. We are struggling with a lot of different things like injuries and we have to suffer like this every week. Again, not taking credit from them. They played well, they are a very good team. After the first mistake, we went 1-0 at half time. We came out with a lot of energy, we pushed them. Then we have a sent off which I feel was not fair.

“We lost 0-3 which looks like a big loss but we have to analyze the situation. I am very proud of the players, how they played in the match. There were parts of the game where we pushed them a lot and put them in trouble. Also, there were a couple of penalties, one to Aniket (Jadhav), the player had clearly hit him, it was so clear. Then a handball which was also clear. Every week is like this for us.”