MARGAO
Goa coach Norberto Gonsalves was overjoyed after his team's comprehensive victory against Tamil Nadu that sealed their qualification to the main round of 76th National Football Championship for Santosh Trophy. "It’s very pleasing,” said Gonsalves. “We want us to be a possession, attack-based team. We want to go out and score more goals than the opposition.
"Yes, there are different goal contributions from players, we’ve got many different ways to score goals. But it’s important also that we don’t concede at the other end. That’s been so far a bit pleasing “ how much more defensively solid we’ve been in the games. And we’ll need to be more if we want to be successful.”
Quick build-up play, short and long meaningful passes, all coupled with a keen and accurate eye for goal has made the team rather crowd-pleasing. And it’s a style of play that hasn’t happened by accident. Gonsalves asserted that this was a desired outcome.
“It’s taken some time to get to what you’re seeing now,” he said. “It takes time to get to what you’re seeing now. What people see on the TV, there’s a lot of work that goes in behind the scenes. Learning takes time, but up here there’s been a lot of support in the last couple of days. What we get allows the players to be as good as they can be and allows the staff to live up and have good sessions more often than not.""I am confident that the team will only get better from here,” Gonsalves concluded.
Meanwhile, GFA president Caitano Fernandes praised the team. "It's a major achievement for Goa to win and qualified for the quarterfinals. All credit goes to the players and coaching staff who did all the hard work. This victory speaks a lot about the football culture in the State and it augurs well for the revival of football in Goa," said Fernandes.
Cosme Olveira, GFA Executive Committee member and deputy chairman of the Technical Committee, also praised the team for their magnificent win and wished them good luck for the next stage.
