FC Pune City and Marcos Tebar will be looking to cement their qualification to the Hero Indian Super League (ISL) 2017-18 playoffs on Sunday when they go up against FC Goa at the Shree Shiv Chhatrapati Sports Complex Stadium in Pune. The Stallions are eyeing their maiden semis berth and know that a victory against the Gaurs will make them the second team to qualify for the Hero ISL 2017-18 playoffs. Speaking to indiansuperleague.com from the Pune camp ahead of the game was Marcos Tebar, who has a goal and two assists to his credit this season. Here are the excerpts.   

Last home game of the league phase, how has the season been so far?

Well, we started the season not as we wanted, with that loss against Delhi Dynamos and I think that defeat was a bit hard for us. Then we went to Kolkata and won that game which was good for us. I think we’ve done well in away games, we got a lot of points. At home, it was a little bit more difficult for us. I think our pitch is a little bit small and most teams come here to be defensive and that was hard for us. Well, our season has been very good so far. (I feel) we’ve qualified for the semi-finals already since there are two games more (for us to play). So we have to focus now to be ready for the semi-finals. But of course, we have one game against Goa and it’s going to be hard. But, we want to win against them in our stadium with our crowd.

What do you like most about your head coach Ranko Popovic?

He wants us to be very intense in the games and he’s supporting us from the bench. It’s going to be the first time for Pune City to be in the play-offs. It’s going to be very huge for all of us and hopefully our supporters are behind us as always and they enjoy the games.

Talking about your opponents FC Goa, they have one of the best attacks in the league. Who do you think pose the biggest threats?

I think Coro (Ferran Corominas) and (Manuel) Lanzarote are two great players. I knew him from Spain, when I played against them or with them in the case of Coro. We’ll try to play as we played there when we beat them at home. It’s going to be a great game because we have attacking players as well.

Apart from Bengaluru and Pune, who do you think will grab the other two spots for the play-offs?

Well, tomorrow if we beat Goa, hopefully we will do that, maybe Jamshedpur and Chennai will be the other two teams in the semi-finals. They are good defensive teams, it’s very hard to score against them and they’re doing a great job.