Arunava about Football A look at football & the world through my eyes!
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Jamshedpur FC’s Scott Cooper faced the media as the Men of Steel prepare to take on Mohun Bagan Super Giant in what would be an ISL super clash.
On the importance of young players in the team…
I think it’s a very relevant question because we’re talking about a country that loves football. We’re talking about a country with now the highest population on the planet. We’re talking about a country that has a very good professional league. We’re talking about a country that has very good crowd attendance, media coverage, and fans watching. So there’s an obligation to bring forward young players because without that there’s no future and every young player needs a chance somewhere. I’m just maybe more brave than some coaches and will always give young players a chance if I see them consistently training and doing well. If you look at my background it’s been that way through Leicester City, through Buriram United, through developing national team players in Thailand and the Philippines. And I don’t see any difference here. I think we have an obligation to win football games for your club. But you also have an obligation to the country that you’re working in, and developing young players that can grow into something. Now we’re seeing that in the likes of Sanan, Emil, Nongdamba, and Nikhil.
I want more of these players to come through but we’re not a youth team and that’s why the average age is how you pinpoint is at 27 because it balances out with senior players. So it’s finding the right balance. It’s just for each club to have an obligation to develop players. Some coaches will say, I’m not going to do that because football is a hire-and-fire culture. Therefore, many coaches would say, why would I play young players to develop them? When I get fired, somebody else comes in a few years later, they get the benefit. So I understand that argument from some coaches. But that’s not the way I see it. The way I see it is, there are many young players around the world that I give a start and they still keep in touch with me now.
On the match against Mohun Bagan SG…
First of all, as any club or player or fan, you should look forward to receiving the champions. You should want to play against the best teams. So I’m excited. I’m excited to play Mohun Bagan. I’ve watched them play. I think they play great football. They’ve got wonderful players. They have signed very good foreign players. The signing of Jason Cummins was great. It’s a coach with a clear philosophy. You can see that. They’re a team I would watch on TV. I like the way they play football. And so they’re not champions for nothing. They play good football. And they’ve got good players. And they play in a style that I particularly like. We know they’ve got good players. We know he’s a good coach. We know they’ve got good Indian players. We know that they play good football. We know they’ve won every game. We know they’re in the AFC. But we also know who we are. And we also know where we are. And so, I would say… For me, as a coach, and I speak for my players, we respect them. But we don’t fear them. There’s a big difference between respect and fear. They have earned that respect because they play good football. They’ve won titles. And they do things in the right way on the field, in my opinion. That’s the type of team that deserves to win titles because they play good football. We are concentrating on ourselves. We’re still a developing team. We’re still going places where we feel we’re still putting layers into the team. We played five games. We could have won all five games. There’s no doubt about that. Maybe the worst we’ve played is in the game we won in the first half against Hyderabad. Maybe one of the best we’ve played is away in Kerala in the first half with a high press that they couldn’t do much.
Maybe the most wasteful we’ve played was against Punjab, where we had 22 shots and couldn’t score. Maybe the most concentrated we were in was in the last game in Northeast, where we worked for 90 minutes. And it gets ruined by time, by lack of VAR, and by ourselves losing focus in a couple of areas. So I think any team playing us will know that this is not an easy team. This is a team that knows what they’re doing. And we have to look at our team as a new team. It’s a new formation, it’s a new philosophy, it’s new players. We could be sitting on 10 or 11 points easily but the points and the table don’t matter right now. It’s irrelevant right now. You listened to what Owen Coyle said the other day. They’ve gone from no points suddenly to 6 points and up the table. But it doesn’t matter. Because when you’re a coach like that, with that type of experience, you know things will change. And so for us, we just have to keep doing the right things. And we’re doing many of the right things. We just haven’t yet put everything together right, but it will come. And during this half-leg, and then rebuilding in January, and then next summer, the aim is to keep pushing the club up. So in short, we look forward to the game again. Because why wouldn’t we want to play against the best team? I do. It’s what I want to play against. I look forward to it. And for ourselves, we know that in every game, we’ve been disappointed with the result. Even with the 1-0 against Hyderabad, we’re disappointed that it’s not 2 or 3. So we’re just going to keep working that way.
On finding the right balance of young and experience players in the team…
You’ve got to find the right balance. If you overload it with young players, you could be on the end of something bad. Because too many young players, you have too much inexperience. But too few young players, when you’ve got many to bring in, you’re taking longer time than you should take. And so it’s really about identifying the players that you think have got a big future and bringing them in, bringing them out. You’ve seen Nongdamba, Sanan, and Emil come in and out. You’ve seen their minutes of play. They’ve been in, out, in, out. You know, over the next two to four years, their minutes should go like this to the point where they’re in their mid-20s, 26-28. They will become stable names on the sheet that are playing every week. And then the next phase of players comes through. And so you have to find the balance. It depends on your formation. It depends on the context of the game. It depends on who you’re playing. It depends on the pressure of the game. But I think our young players have done a good job. Sanan came without playing a professional game in his life. He’s shown a willingness to run, to be brave in possession, to adapt his defensive mind. Emil’s pushed himself, and Nikhil’s getting better every single game so it’s a fine balance. There’s no actual equation for that. There’s no actual answer for that. You just have to feel it as a coach. What’s the right time and the right amount in that game, in that position? Even some things like in certain areas, are there too many young players around each other? Are they in different pockets with experienced players? So there’s so much depth that has to go into that kind of thinking. Then you’ve got to watch the player’s mindset. Can he be bullied easily by a senior player? Or is he mentally strong? Is he decisive in penetration? Does he give the ball away? Or is he good in possession? So you’ve got to develop them tactically, technically, and psychologically. It’s not easy. That balance is a difficult one to get. But I think we’re doing okay with it for now.
On his thoughts on the extra time added in the match against NorthEast United FC…
We can say that the plan we went to with North East is not the normal way we have played before. We had a game a few days earlier. We had to leave at 3 a.m. We traveled for two days. Many players got bangs and injuries. Pratik was one of them. I know we have to play Mohun Bagan a few days after this. I said to myself, what can we do? We will go into a midfield block and concentrate. It is another opportunity for me to give our team another aspect of what we can do defensively. We held the plan together perfectly. People can say what they want. I know NorthEast United did not create any chance inside the box. In 90 minutes, they were contained easily. The players delivered the training plan perfectly. We put it together in a couple of days. It showed me that young players out there can play in that area. We gave our team something else that we can use in the future. It is just a shame when we get to 93 minutes, we concede.
First of all, the added minutes. We have to look at that. In the first half, there were two injuries and one water break for three minutes. In the second half, one injury, and one water break for seven minutes. Even one of the North East players spoke to the referee, it must be six or seven minutes. He looked at me and he laughed because he knew he was joking. Then I looked at the board, it was seven minutes. I said to the referee, you must be joking, right? Where? From what? Okay, Alen wasted some time giving the armband to TP. Is that five minutes or is it ten seconds? It is ten seconds. But we cannot use that as an excuse. It is not an excuse. The next thing is we can speak about the goals. There is the penalty. Is it a penalty? Is there a handball? These things would have been cleared up by VAR. So, the penalty comes in the 99th minute. How long are we going to play? I should bring a pillow tomorrow night and stay the night. I should bring an overnight bag and tell my wife I will see her in the morning. If the game is going to be thislong, we will stay overnight. We will still be playing the next day. Is it going to carry on like this? For me, I felt the officials felt the pressure in their stadium to give more minutes. I do not think they knew why they did it. They just felt it was a junction for an armband. It is not our obligation to be fast with the ball when we are winning on 90 minutes. Our obligation is to slow it down like any team does. The referee’s obligation is not to let the circumstances affect your judgment because the truth is, it affected judgement. Two more minutes went on till 99 minutes. And then the penalty. Watch the referee. He does not know what to do. And then he looks at the linesman and he gives a penalty. Which takes me to another factor. In this league, the ISL is so organized with everything. There are rules for this and that. Everything is under lock and key. But the one thing that makes me the most is the goals or cancellation of goals. Because there is no VAR. You know, if there is a VAR in this league, there is five penalties every game. I might as well tell my players now, foul offensively in the box because everything we do from set-piece, my players are getting fouled constantly. I am used to working with VAR. Now I have to change my mindset to say, okay, there is no VAR. So what do I have to do with players? They cannot watch everyone. So now I have to change the onset of the set-piece.
This league needs VAR. If there is a VAR in this league, many results are totally different. And the next question is, we play in the NorthEast, we play Mohun Bagan We play Hyderabad, we play Kerala. All those teams have got more rest than us. Is this fair? Is this an advantage? Of course it is. Is this parity? Of course it is not. So I ask for fairness. Give us the same rest, roughly or even itself out. Give us VAR. Because right now, set-pieces, it is like a crime scene. Because the referee, they cannot watch it all. And so we have to look at that. We have to change the set-piece based on there is no VAR. We know we are going to get fouled. So we have to take a look at that. But the most damning thing about the North East United result was, we had lost our shape properly from the 75th minute. It was not the last minutes because we had one or two players that either did not understand the tactical, or chose to do something different. They have been told. They have been met. They have been told directly like any player would know in a championship ball. Because there is not something we can deal with. It was quite simple tactical stuff that we did in training. And all they needed to do was follow it out. We had one or two players that did not follow it. They opened the doors up. So actually it was from 72 or 73 minutes. So those players know the art. I do not expect to see that again. We talked yesterday about following tactical stuff. Not taking things into your own hands. So it was a mix, that game of the time, the decisions and ourselves.
