FC Goa, co-owned by Virat Kohli has the legendary Brazilian Zico as coach.
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“We had a good pre-season training in Dubai for 20 days, where we played four friendly matches against quality teams to remain unbeaten until we lost our last encounter against Hatta Club”, he said.
Brazilian legend Zico, who was instrumental in recommending the pre-season tour for the team so that his boys could achieve high match performance levels, had high praise for the facilities available at Dubai Sports City.
The marquee player for FC Goa will lend solidity at the back and is expected to partner French defender Gregory Arnolin, the lone surviving foreign player from last year’s squad. I saw him past year and he was good.
Other Indians like Narayan Das, Pronay Halder and local talent Mandar Rao Desai are expected to fill the five available slots for domestic players.
Chennaiyin FC head coach Marco Materazzi joked that the five Brazilians in his team would be a handful for the opposition.
Elano has played for Brazil in the Federation Internationale de Football Association World Cup 2010 and has represented clubs like Shakhtar Donetsk, Manchester City, Galatasaray and Santos.
I just hope to score as many goals as possible but most importantly help Chennaiyin win the ISL. “I spoke to Zico and he explained to me the nature of the league how it was and the discussion with him was what made me join this project here at FC Goa”, he said, to queries about how he arrived at the Goa ISL team for Season 2.
“The ISL is contributing hugely to Indian football”.
In the run up to the kick off of much anticipated second season of Hero Indian Super League (ISL) starting 3rd October 2015, the eight Clubs came together here in Mumbai to talk about their pre-season preparations, squad, plans and expectations. It will have to be of similar duration as in other leagues in other countries.
“The duration of three months is not enough. Ultimately, India will have to have one league”, he added. “We couldn’t manage to retain these players so I have to count on the new players”, Zico told TOI once the official briefing was over.
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Kerala Blasters coach Peter Taylor also felt that it was too early to make a comparison with other top leagues but said that increasing number of players in Europe know about ISL now.
