Calcutta: East Bengal may have shown tremendous professional clout by signing a current World Cupper in Johnny Acosta, but they fell flat when it came to introducing the Costa Rican to the media, here on Wednesday.

Acosta, who featured in the 2018 World Cup in Russia, speaks only Spanish.

But the club authorities, including their new title sponsor Quess, did not feel the necessity to keep an interpreter available to make it easier for their latest acquisition to interact.

They tried to take refuge in technology, but with the Internet connectivity being rather poor at the venue - the club tent in the Maidan - that too did not really solve the problem. Also, Google Translate is hardly an ideal platform for a media conference.

After a lot of struggle, Acosta managed to say that he was happy to be with East Bengal and he knew that it was one of the biggest clubs of India.

Asked to voice his opinion on East Bengal's present squad, after having seen them in action in their last CFL match against Police AC, Acosta visibly struggled with East Bengal CEO Sanjit Sen trying to make sense of his answer through Google Translate.

But with the questions and the answers taking a farcical turn, the media conference was finally called off with promises of it being rescheduled with a human interpreter at hand.

Before the media event took a turn for the worse, East Bengal revealed that Acosta would don jersey No. 2.