07 November,2020 07:29 AM IST | Mumbai | Ronald Chettiar
FC Goa boss Juan Ferrando
FC GOA kick off their Indian Super League campaign on November 22 against Bengaluru FC under new coach Juan Ferrando, 39, who replaced compatriot Sergio Lobera.
Lobera helped the Gaurs qualify for the AFC Champions League by topping last year's ISL points tally. The Goans lost to Chennaiyin FC in the semi-finals last season.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this season's 11-team ISL will be played entirely in Goa, beginning November 20. And Ferrando, who has the experience of coaching the reserve team of La Liga club Malaga CF (2012-2013) besides Greek club Volos FC (2017-2020), reckoned that with matches coming thick and fast, and the entire tournament being played in a bio-bubble, things won't be easy for his team.
"Many of our players have not played for almost seven months and are not yet match fit. We recently started working on the pitch. We did not have a lot of time in the pre-season. Going ahead, there will be lot of injuries and that will be a major factor as we will not have much time to recover with matches scheduled every two days," said Ferrando during the club's virtual media day on Friday.
However, he also felt that being professionals, they cannot complain about the situation. "It's a strange time but we are a professional, high-performance team. We have to be strong. For some, it might be difficult but we must understand that we are privileged to be training and playing rather than being at home in quarantine," he said.
After their match against Bengaluru FC, the Goan side will take on Mumbai City FC (Nov 25), who are managed by their former coach Lobera. But Ferrando insisted that he cannot be focussing on specific opponents. "Our focus is on Bengaluru FC now. We then take it match by match and work on our game. Once we are done with Bengaluru, we will focus on Mumbai.
"But I'm not focussing only on these two matches. We have to beat all the teams to make it to the play-offs.
So, our mentality is to always be competitive and go for the three points in every game. We don't want to focus our energy thinking about specific fixtures," said Ferrando.
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