Jamshedpur FC

The Indian national, Pronay Halder, after producing a dominant performance in the previous game against ATK Mohun Bagan, talks about the Head Coach’s influence on the team, facing the defending champions, Mumbai City FC in the next fixture and much more.

Here are the excerpts from the pre-match interview:

Your thoughts on playing against your former team, ATK Mohun Bagan in the last game

It was a great game and we felt great on the pitch. First of all, we are very happy that we got the 3 points and we move up the table to the second position. But we have only played 4 games and there are 16 more to go, so we’ll keep our focus on one game after the other.

Your thoughts on the pre-season training and your time on the pitch in the opening games of the season

As you know, we’ve had a good pre-season training period! All the staff and coaches have been very motivating towards every player to maintain our consistency in our performance. So everyone has been very supportive and if you might have noticed that from the pre-season to the last game, we have been maintaining our consistency in our games, but as I said before, only 4 games have been played and there is still a majority of the season to be played. So, we move on match by match and our focus is on the upcoming game now.

How does the Gaffer’s flare motivate the whole squad to perform well?

Our Head Coach does not just motivate me but motivates the whole squad in every session. He is a great coach for me, and he knows how to unleash a player’s true potential. Before the ATK Mohun Bagan game, he spoke to me and motivated me a lot which gave me some confidence to perform well on the pitch. So yeah, I feel very happy training under our Gaffer.

How is the team planning to counter the tactics of the Islanders’ new coach?

Honestly, for me Mumbai City FC is the toughest team and opposition to face in the Hero ISL. They have really good players in their squad along with their new coach but ultimately, we’ll just concentrate on our game and we have to stick together till the end as we move forward. Our team is really looking forward to the next fixture. What is the difference between the earlier squad and the current squad of Mumbai City FC?

I was part of only one season with Mumbai City FC in which we made it to the semi-finals in 2016. But there are differences in the squad with multiple changes but I have played with Ahmed Jahouh and Rowlin Borges which is the reason why I told you that they have some good players so we are all looking forward to the game tomorrow.