New Delhi, (Asian independent) Ahead of the new season of the Indian Super League, Mumbai City FC head coach Des Buckingham on Tuesday said the club will continue to play the exciting brand of attacking football and won’t make any drastic change.
The former Melbourne City FC manager replaced Sergio Lobera after the latter went on for another job inside the City Football Group.
Buckingham, who is the youngest coach this ISL season, wants to retain the club’s free-flowing attacking form of play and pick up from where Lobera left last season.
“The first thing is to recognise the excellent work Sergio and his team achieved last year. They achieved things this club has never achieved. It’s important to highlight some of the good work that had taken place and we don’t want to throw that away,” the coach said.
“In terms of the playing style, I watched all of the games last year – it was an exciting brand of attacking football put in place by Sergio and his team and that really strikes true to my philosophy. I will try to add to it, not change it,” he added.
The 36-year-old maintained that his team has a good mix of youth and experience going into the season.
“We have a good mix of ages and experiences, the Indian players we have are very good and I am very happy with that. We have also got some excellent senior players both Indian and foreigners,” he said.
Talking about his vision, the coach said, “My vision for the next couple of years is to build upon the success that the team has achieved last year. When you define what ‘success’ is – we have two trophies sitting in our cabinet, which externally are a real measure of results. But then, we also have other measures that we want to build upon, from the playing style that we saw last year.”
The coach also spoke about the developing youth and youth-oriented setup in MCFC.
“I have got a lot of experience in working with the youths. I was excited to watch the U-23 players we have at the club go and perform in the U-23 championship.”
