Manolo Marquez: We'll have to face one of the favourite teams for title

The Spaniard expressed his thoughts ahead of his side's clash against the former ISL champions.

After a perfect start to the season, Hyderabad FC will now face a sturdy Bengaluru FC in a weekend encounter. Bengaluru also had a near-perfect start to the campaign, but narrowly missed out on the three points in their opening game. Speaking to the media ahead of the big encounter, Hyderabad FC boss Manolo Marquez seemed confident.

“We are happy with the first win, but one of the things is that when you’re the coach you have to know that you cannot be very happy for a win in just one game. We have to improve in all our areas and work on it,” started the Spaniard, speaking about the last victory. 

Hyderabad, who had only two wins in their entire campaign last season, see the past victory over Odisha FC as a huge morale boost for the camp. “The last win gives us a lot of confidence. The teams with confidence are better; victories give confidence to the team, the players. We played a good game, good performance from the players and for me every game is hard. All the teams in the moment are more or less the same,” said Marquez.

Speaking about the opposition, the Spaniard commented, “Bengaluru is a great team. They have a great coach, they have good experience in the ISL. They were champions in 2018-19 and we will have to face one of the favourite teams for the title. It will be a very tough game.” 

Last season, Hyderabad couldn’t register a win against the Blues. “I hope a very difficult game is coming up for us,” Manolo Marquez added. “The friendly game against BFC in pre-season and the game tomorrow will be totally different games,” the coach spoke while recalling the friendly between the two teams.

Bengaluru are widely considered to be one of the most potent teams from set-piece situations. Addressing this point, the head coach of the Nizams stated, “Not especially for this game, you have to work for set-pieces in attack as well as defence. We have to defend against their set-pieces because Bengaluru are strong, they have a lot of different situations and they have very good headers and shooters. We will try to avoid these kinds of situations, but when they arrive, we have to defend very well because we know this is one of the strong points of Bengaluru.”

Hyderabad’s star acquisition from Australia, Joel Chianese missed the last game due to some unknown reasons. Clearing the doubts surrounding the winger, Manolo Marquez quoted, “Joel didn't play the first game because he was ill. Now, he has totally recovered and he can play.” However, Fran Sandaza is set to miss the game on Saturday.