The Highlanders technical manager Hendrikus Pieter de Jongh who watched his team drop two valued points under controversial circumstances against firm relegation candidates Herentals is hoping for a positive response from his charges when Bosso face-off with another relegation-threatened outfit – TelOne FC at Barbourfields stadium on Sunday.
De Jongh, who was not impressed by a lot of things in the match against Herentals, including controversial calls by the match officials is now over it, and his focus is now on the ‘difficult’ task ahead.
“Focus is now on Sunday, today (Thursday) we are free because the boys are little tired, we had a lot of matches, tomorrow and Saturday we train, and on Sunday we play our match. I believe in good results, I have a good feeling. What I can do is ask the team to be eager for victory, like (how they played) the second half against Chicken Inn, and it is important that the players with quality make difference,” said de Jongh.
The Dutchman is aware of the threat that the Sunday opponents pose, and he will note take them lightly.
“Three matches, clean sheets. Their last match was a victory against Manica Diamonds, before that they had played a mid-week match against FC Platinum, which ended 0-0. So four points in two matches, plus clean sheets,” added De Jongh.
Although he has respect for the opponents, De Jongh is hoping for his side to maximize on home advantage and produce good results in front of the multitude of Highlanders supporters expected to throng the stadium on Sunday.
He further emphasized on the competitiveness of this league, saying that the recent log table and the results are a testament of how difficult the league is.
The Dutchman who subscribes to tiki taka style of play further added that most teams in this league play catenaccio – perhaps the reason why strikers have found it difficult to score more league goals.
“We play at home, so we want a good result – a good result is a victory, that is the intention. If we win on Sunday we will make steps up the log. We know as coaches that it is not easy, as I told you earlier, in this league any team can lose to any team, and any team can win against anyone. Even if you look at the results the most common scorelines are 2-1,0-0, 1-1, 1-0; there is never a big score. Most teams play catenaccio football like in Italy, making it difficult to find way,” he said.
Catenaccio is an Italian word that means ‘door-bolt’, in this style of football, the major focus is on tightening the defense.
Even though ‘Catenaccio’ is an Italian word, this style of football is not of the Italian origin, rather it was first adopted by an Austrian coach Karl Rappan and its origin can be traced back to 1930-40′s when he was coaching Switzerland.
However, it came into prominence when the Argentine coach Helenio Herera, who was coaching Internazionale during 1960′s, adopted it for winning games by defending very small leads.