Mumbai City FC head coach Des Buckingham believes the team needs to build on momentum ahead of the upcoming Hero Indian Super League season. The new Indian football calendar will commence with the Durand Cup in August with the ISL taking place in November and concluding with the Super Cup as they look to emulate the European calendar.
“I think a longer season is great for the league. That’s what we want, the players want and this is great from the development point of view,” Mumbai City FC head coach Des Buckingham said. “In terms of offseason, the players have been given a schedule by our strength and conditioning coach [Danny Deigan] ahead of the season, to make sure that they are as prepared as they can be coming in here and that we don’t have to start from the beginning.”
“We will be looking to carry the momentum from the Champions League. For me, it is about continuing from there. We’ve got a good base. We’ve got ten of the starting eleven that finished that Champions League game or started at Champions League game and we’ve retained a large core of the group,” he added. “The beauty of having them (young players) and working with them day in day out is you can see and track their development and as long as you’re clear on what you want to achieve and they’re very clear and how they work towards achieving that. The most important thing is we get our players in Dubai and then try and get them match-fit so that when we travel to the Durand Cup, we’ll be taking our full first team and, we are looking forward to playing in front of the fans for the first time in a while.”
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