Confirmed Mohannad’s Absence Due to Suspension.. Leko: Our Goal is To Win All Matches of the New Season with All Due Respect to Our Competitors
In his first public press conference since he assumed the responsibilities of the Boss Squad, the newly-appointed Croatia’s head coach of Al Ain, Ivan Leko, stressed that the preseason preparations for the new season went well. “We kicked off the preseason training sessions on 10th July 2019 by holding our home summer camp in Al Ain City. During the away training camp held in Austria and Slovenia, we played six matches,” he said.
He added: “As for Shabab Al Ahli Dubai team, I know the team well. They performed well in the past season, and it is great to have a strong starting match against a good competitor. We all are looking forward to showing great performance and achieve a strong positive result, given that we are playing at home and among our loyal grassroots.”
Commenting on a question on the need for a playmaker to be available in the squad, he said: “Al Ain has professional players with a high caliber of quality and skills. I am fully satisfied with the players I have in the squad. I am interested only at the moment in working with them while adopting the best methods to perform well and according to the level consistent with the ambitions of the fans and make them happy.
“The squad has several new players who have signed to the team recently. If there is any player who can score ten goals and can assist in creating another ten goals, then he is more than welcome to join the team. In my point of view, playmaking in football is not a position as players have certain tasks to fulfill in the field, and part of them is to assist and score goals. Any coach looks forward to joining the best players to his squad.”
“Our major goal is to win all matches in this new season,” he said in response to a question on his team’s goal out of participating in the Arabian Gulf Cup. “I deal with any match with the “winning mentality” even in the training sessions. We will fight and do our best to dominate the matches with sights set to achieve our goals in all competitions.”
He confirmed that Friday’s match would be a new challenge for the team, the coaching team, the club management, and even the fans. “We all must work together to put the team on the right track and win all the challenges by performing honorably and achieving the best positive results.”
He signed off: “All the team players are fully ready to the coming match, and only Mohannad will not be included in the list of the team due to suspension for receiving a red card during Al Ain’s last match in the previous competition.”
