AFC league: East Bengal coach wants fans to stand by team in hour of crisis

• East Bengal squander 2-0 half-time lead to lose 3-2 to Al Shorta.

• Antonio Lopez Habas rues missed chances, calls for fan support during a difficult spell.

• Defeat leaves East Bengal third in Group D with one point from two matches.

East Bengal missed an opportunity to celebrate their return to continental football on Tuesday evening, squandering a comfortable 2-0 half-time lead to lose 3-2 to Iraq’s Al Shorta in the AFC Champions League Two, Asia’s second-tier club competition, at Salt Lake Stadium.

The defeat leaves Antonio Lopez Habas’s men with plenty of work to do. They are third in Group D with one point from two matches, having drawn 2-2 against Jordan’s Al-Hussein in their opening game. They will next travel to Oman to face Al Seeb on 27 October.

A string of missed chances left the Spanish head coach fuming, as East Bengal had looked poised to claim their first win in the competition.

"I am not happy with the result. However, I think we had enough chances to win the match today. We created at least five or six clear goal-scoring opportunities. We were not behind in the fight with the opponent either. But despite creating so many opportunities, we scored only two goals. On the other hand, the opponent took its chances. That made the difference in the end," he said.

The veteran coach, who joined East Bengal after two highly successful stints with arch-rivals Mohun Bagan, also appealed for support from the club’s loyal fans during this difficult phase.

"The support from the audience is also very important to us. When the team is going through difficult times, it is almost necessary for the fans to stand by it. Not only when the team wins, but also when it loses, the fans should be by its side," Habas told the media.

Lalhlansanga scored both goals for the red-and-gold brigade in the first half. However, Ahmed Yahya, Hussein Al Saedi and Kingsley Kuku struck for Al Shorta to hand the eight-time Iraqi league champions their second win in the group.

East Bengal have often gone toe-to-toe with higher-ranked opponents in continental competitions. Their run to the semi-finals of the 2013 AFC Cup remains one of their finest campaigns on the continental stage, ending with a defeat to Kuwait SC.

Earlier, at the turn of the millennium, the club achieved another landmark when it won the ASEAN Club Championship, defeating Thailand’s BEC Tero Sasana in the final.