Oscar Bruzon reveals how can East Bengal stop in-form Alaaeddine Ajaraie

East Bengal will face a tough challenge against the Highlanders.

Oscar Bruzon’s East Bengal hope to get their first win of the 2024-25 Indian Super League (ISL) season when they face an electric NorthEast United side on Friday (November 29) at the Salt Lake Stadium, Kolkata.

This will be a fierce battle for the Red & Gold Brigade as they face the team with the most goals in the ISL this season. NorthEast United also boast a huge asset in star striker Alaaeddine Ajaraie, who is dominating the goal-scoring charts with 11 goals in just nine appearances for the Highlanders.

Oscar Bruzon, however, has insisted he doesn’t have a particular plan on man-marking Ajaraie or focus too much on just stopping him. Ahead of the game, he stated: “We can stop Alaaedin with collective effort, controlling his area well and we know that he’s been a differential player. If you think we have an individual marking plan, that’s not it. We need to reduce his spaces to act and we’ll do that with players on that side.

“I never put too much emphasis on stopping a single player, because if he doesn’t have the proper supply from number six and proper backing from number nine and if he doesn’t have the distribution of players behind him, he’ll be neutralized. Sometimes when you want to neutralize a player, you must think about how gets his supply, his main actions and what are his associations up front.

“It’s a team effort, we’ve been working on this and we’ll have the solution to stopping him on the right side. If he comes on the left side, we’ll have more runners on that side. NorthEast United have three up-front who are dangerous and score a lot of goals, so we need to neutralize all of them and not focus too much on only one player,” Oscar Bruzon also stated.

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Oscar Bruzon aims for a win

Oscar Bruzon also explained how his side’s strategy works under him ahead of this big game, stating: “Our strategy is always dynamic.

“We can think about systems here, but depending on the moments of the game and when we are attacking or defending, things change. When Talal players, sometimes our shape for defending is completely different from our attacking shape. Players don’t get simple information, they get about the moments of the game.

“The idea is always to score goals, we are not a team just to defend or only get clean sheets. We try to be superior in moments of the game as much more moments of the game as possible. In the ISL, if you see in the last weeks we’re seeing open results and that is because the team who scores the opening goal gets more chances to win. When the opposition team opens, these big results are coming. Many results are coming from teams who many feel will lose,” Oscar Bruzon also claimed.

East Bengal have just one point from their seven ISL games this season. They will need to produce something really special to oust the in-form NorthEast United side and properly kick-start their campaign under Bruzon.

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