FC Goa play their first home game of Hero Indian Super League (ISL) 2018-19 on Wednesday when they host Mumbai City FC at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium. The Gaurs’ confidence levels will be booming after beating defending champions Chennaiyin in their previous encounter and they will be hoping for back-to-back wins.

A day prior to the clash, FC Goa head coach, Sergio Lobera was present at the pre-match press conference and spoke about the 18-day gap between their games. “The calendar is the way it is.  For the 18 days that have gone, that’s how it came up, so we cannot make any excuses about it. There are few teams that have played a lot of matches in a short span of time and that’s going to happen to us as well. So, for us it’s very simple, we have to play to the best of our abilities. If we’re looking for excuses at this point of time, the only thing we’re doing is that we are wasting our time,” he said.

The Spaniard is delighted to be back home and playing in front of their passionate fans. “We are very happy with the performance we gave in Chennai, but I was disappointed with the NorthEast game as I thought we left two points behind there. We are very excited to play in front of our fans in our first home game and we will be trying to achieve three points,” Lobera said.

The Gaurs have been a major attacking threat under Lobera and when reminded about their impressive goal-scoring record at home last season, Lobera replied, “As you guys know, as we keep speaking about in conferences, we always try to play an attacking brand of football. We try to take the initiative in the game and we are here always to win (by) doing that, so for us that’s the most important thing.”

He continued: “Maintaining the numbers from last season obviously won’t be an easy task but the aim for us will be to try and do that. And we will also try and ensure that we are better defensively... but obviously, the style of play that we have has some risks involved in it, but we have to try and improve on those two aspects.”

When pressed on his side’s defensive frailties, the 41-year-old asserted, “Maintaining a clean sheet is not something I’m obsessed with. What I’m obsessed with is the goal difference that we have. After the first two games, if you noticed, we were on top of the table for one simple reason, because we scored more goals and our goal difference was more than others. So, for us that’s always the important thing. I would always prefer to win 5-2 rather than 1-0. The 5-2 has a goal difference of +3 and the 1-0 means just a goal difference of +1, so the clean sheet is not better than the first option.”

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