Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Nail-biter on card as blues take on nemesis Mumbai FC

AIFF Media 
Bengaluru FC Media 

With the sole intent of consolidating the good start, Hero I-League title contender Bengaluru FC (BFC) take on Mumbai FC (MFC) tomorrow at the Sree Kanterava Stadium, Bengaluru. 

Both teams have made a perfect start to their league campaign – BFC winning both their home ties convincingly and MFC winning a home and away. Bengaluru tops the points table with a better goal difference. 

MFC have always been a hard nut to crack for the champions. In the last three editions of I-League, they’ve manage to beat them only once, that is last year at home. 

Roca, whose two timely substitutions in the last match paid rich divided sounded cautious. He said, “After two wins, they’ll come stronger mentally and they have enough talents to put us in trouble, but we’re ready for a hard battle.”  

Thoi Singh and Karan Sawney, two former BFC men have truly prospered for Mumbai in the last match. 

Bengaluru have signed few Indian players lately - Lenny, Harmanjot Khabra, and Mandar Rao Dessai among them have featured in the starting eleven. 

According to Roca, “It is not easy for the new players to understand the philosophy of the new club from the first week. What I want from them is to be at par with the existing team at the earliest. But we have to give them time for that.” 

“We are trying to build a superior team, this team is under construction, we’re adjusting things, and not completed yet!” added coach. 

Roca is completely aware of opponents’ strength, which is speed. They have a good forward in Victorino Fernandes, he plans to cut the supply of long balls. 

BFC’s philosophy is to build the game from behind against MFC’s counter attack theory. So for Roca it is important not to lose the ball and give Mumbai the opportunity to counter attack.
Bengaluru would want to bag full points before they play a difficult away game against East Bengal this weekend. 

The Essel Group-owned MFC is trained by Santosh Kashyap, a shrewd coach capable of upstaging the big-wigs! 

Talking to the media, coach sounded positive, “Great start for us in I-League, our players have put in the best effort, and team is high on confidence.” 

Kashyap is targeting for a top three finish. “I have great respect for BFC, we are going to meet the strongest opponent. Believe tomorrow’s match is going to be a championship match for us.” he adds.   
Mumbai will take the field sans foreigners, owing to transfer formalities, which is yet to be completed.

Kashyap is content with his current batch, “I believe in Indian players and they have responded positively in such a short span of time. Boys have been fantastic on home as well as away matches.” 
“I have trust and confidence in them; they are doing good job!” adds the Mumbai-based coach who believes in playing attacking style of football. 

The match is scheduled at 7 pm and will be telecast live on TEN2.





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