During his first interaction with the media a few months back, Mumbai City FC's marquee player-cum-manager Nicolas Anelka insisted that he wasn't ready for a full-time managerial role and was only donning the hat of a manager for this season.


Sunil Chhetri watches his ISL teammate & Mumbai City FC's marquee player-cum-manager Nicolas Anelka train at Cooperage. Pic/Atul Kamble

Yesterday, as the Mumbai franchise trained at Cooperage, the Frenchman was more at ease being Anelka, the player, than Anelka, the manager.

For almost the entire nearly hour-and-half-long session, Anelka barely exchanged a few lines with teammates, except at the end when he led the team's stellar attacking force of Sunil Chhetri, Andre Moritz and Sony Norde in a specific drill for strikers.