FC Pune City and coach, Antonio Habas will be keen on upsetting Mumbai City FC in Thursday’s Maharashtra derby in the ISL 2016, post their loss to them in their home leg. Habas revealed that their recent win against Kolkata has given a boost to the entire squad.
“After the last match, our group is good. The players are ready to play. Post our match against Kolkata, the team feels fantastic. Mumbai beat us in Pune, we’ll try and beat them tomorrow. We know it’s going to be difficult but we’ll try”, he said.
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Antonio spoke about how he is still finding his feet in his new role as the manager of Pune and refused to talk about the quality of referees in the Indian Super League- which has come under scrutiny, especially after Goa’s recent game against Kerala.
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“For the last two seasons, I was the coach of Kolkata. For me this is a new experience. I don’t think about ISL 1 and ISL 2 now. We seem to talk about different things except football. We only want to talk about good football”, he stated.
Pune have managed to score just 8 goals in their 7 matches so far but the manager believes his side isn’t the only team that’s struggling to score goals this season. “Except Delhi, all the other teams are winning by close margins like 1-0 or 2-1. Only one team is playing well and scoring. I think that all the teams have the same problem of scoring. But we’ll try and improve. It’s a very competitive league and it’s looking difficult for the strikers to score”, he explained.
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Pune will be without the services of two players in tomorrow’s match against Mumbai, “We have two players who are injured, Arata and Pitu”, Antonio said.
With a goal difference of -1, the Stallions will be keen on improving in the attacking department - an area which has proved to be their undoing this season. While they’ve only conceded on an average, a goal per match, tepid performances up front have pushed them down seventh position in the points table.
“My teams need to keep moving up and down. We’re trying to find the balance between defence and attack but we need to score more. The magic word for me is balance. It’s not good if a team scores a lot but also concedes a lot. The idea is to be effective with the ball and without the ball”, he concluded.
