FC Pune City head coach Antonio Habas has promised to fight when they take on Atlético de Kolkata at the Shree Shiv Chhatrapati Sports Complex Stadium in Balewadi on Sunday. The Stallions are presently at the bottom of the league with six points from seven matches, and the former ATK head coach has assured that his players won’t go down without a fight against the Kolkatan team.“I’m Pune now. I prepare my team to play against my opponents ATK. It’s as simple as that. I know some players know me and I know them but they have a different coach and a different system now. I am only focusing on Pune and I am sure they are doing the same with their team,” Habas told reporters on Saturday.Habas won the inaugural edition of the league and then reached the semis last year with ATK, but he hasn’t been able to influence Pune’s campaign in the similar way. Commenting on that, the Spaniard said: “We know that we are not playing well. But this is not the same season as two years ago. Some decisions, some mistakes and some individuals… it resulted in us having about 3-4 points less than we had envisaged.”He added: “We need time to make the team play according to my system. That’s a long process and that is why we don’t have as many points. But we are working on a daily basis on just this, and it doesn’t matter that we are at the bottom of the table, we will still fight. Let’s see tomorrow. This is a short league, we have no time to adjust but we have been working very hard. Sometimes, the team has played well as per my system, sometimes not."Only four teams play the semis. Pune have never played the semis. Our objective is to play the semis. That’s what we want. In the first year, our target at ATK was to qualify for the semis. We did that and we went on to win. Next year, we had the objective to qualify, we did that. This year, we wanted to bring our team and try and get to the semis. That’s what we are doing."However, when asked if he thought Pune were still in semis contention, Habas didn’t look too certain. “Now, I don’t know. Right now we are bottom of the table. Maybe after tomorrow, I can tell you. Our target is to qualify for the semis and till the last minute, we will fight to get that. Finally, if we can’t, we will fight to the last match. You win one game and you move up, so let’s see after tomorrow,” the 59-year-old said.Habas also shared his thoughts on the size of the Balewadi pitch, which is a bit on the small side. “I don’t want to use that as an excuse. But in Pune, we do have a smaller pitch. For my style, we do like to have a big ground. But that’s not an excuse. This is our ground, we work on this. Small pitch is better for defensive teams or away teams because they come here and choke space and there is less space for us to play our game. But this is our ground,” he said.
