India's chief coach Stephen Constantine has blamed "individual errors" as the reason behind the hosts' 1-2 defeat against New Zealand in the Intercontinental Cup football tournament here. The Sunil Chhetri-led India scored resounding 5-0 and 3-0 wins over Chinese Taipei and Kenya before producing a below-par performance to slump to its first defeat in the tournament yesterday.

And Constantine said silly individual errors cost India the match. "Look, whenever you win two games 5-0, 3-0, maybe you get a little-bit carried away. New Zealand were a young and disciplined side, they played quite well. We made some mistakes. We didn't start off as we did in the previous two games. We scored first and we let two silly goals in. Individual errors cost us today," the coach told reporters last night. "This is part of the learning process. We are not going to beat every team 3-0."