The coach of the Kolkata giants admits that his side will miss the services of Lalrindika Ralte the most…
Eelco Schattorie has done his bit of research on Hong Kong champions, Kitchee SC ahead of their AFC Cup group F tie on Tuesday evening at the Salt Lake Stadium, Kolkata.
He mentioned that although the opposition lines up in a defensive manner, they do tend to win their matches by big margins which is somewhat perplexing.
“They are the best team in our group, looking at their history and performances. I do not have much first hand information about them. They have a lot of good foreign players including players who hold a passport of two countries – players with double nationalities. That means the squad will be strong.
“The video that I saw they play a 4-3-3 in a defensive way. But the strange thing is they have many winning streaks, 4-1 or 3-0. So either they are a defensive team very good on the counter attack or they are fooling us.  In the video I also saw they are very well organized,” he shared his opinion on Kitchee SC.
The Red and Gold brigade will miss the services of Arnab Mondal, Saumik Dey, Lalrindika Ralte, Cavin Lobo and Abhishek Das who have been called for the national and under-23 camps.
“As for our own team, we are missing a lot of players on national duty. The biggest miss is Lalrindika Ralte because he has the creativity and the forward passes. His replacement will be Joaquim Abranches. This week, I tried to focus on a good defensive organization. In the centre back position, Raju (Gaikwad) will play in place of Gurwinder (Singh).
“Replacing the quality of Ralte is very difficult. But overall the morale of the players and the feeling of wanting to show for supporters and even for myself is very well,” he remarked.
Having lost their opening AFC Cup to Johor Darul 4-1 which was incidentally Schattorie’s first game in-charge of East Bengal, the Dutchman was asked as to how he planned to improve his defense.
“Look it’s a home match so obviously there is the advantage. They played their last game on the 7th March and so I think they can have fatigue. But of course they have players with double passports, at least three-to-four.  But as I said the players are happy.  They want to do something. They want to work together. At this stage I am also in survival mode. This is not an easy job to do. Expectations are very high. I can only give the players the confidence that I trust them.
“50% of any game is organization. As long as we are organized, we have a good chance. Ranti Martins is in good form. Dudu (Omagbemi) needs to find his form but he has my full trust. I have full confidence in him and he wants to work for the team,” he stated.
On being asked if he was targeting three points against Kitchee, Schattorie answered in the positive but added that they are facing a top quality opponent.
“I always target three points. I am not a defensive coach. My intention is always to win. Having said that you have to be realistic always as both teams have 50% chance of winning when they start, either home or away. Now in my opinion, the opponents have more quality. But football is a strange game. In a home game you can have the supporters behind you and that is an advantage. I always like to play possession based football but we are still in the process of improving. Since time is very short, I was focusing on getting results.

“In the game in Malaysia, people say that we conceded four. There were three goals from set pieces. But we were unlucky although overall the team (Johor) was better than us.  It was an unlucky penalty. A free-kick in the top corner, if he tried that 100 times again he won’t do it again. There was also an offside,” he explained.
“On Tuesday, we face a better team, better challenge but we are two weeks into being together so we are more organized,” he said.