NEWLY-HIRED national men’s football team coach Albert Capellas of Spain aims to bring a winning attitude and build his squad around three core values to jar the Pinoy booters out of the doldrums so that they can be a force to reckon with anew in international play.
“Our way of playing is based on three core values. Without these three values, we cannot achieve our aims,” Capellas said in his first face-to-face press conference with local media last week together with Philippine Football Federation president John Gutierrez and national team manager Freddy Gonzalez.
“The first one is honesty. That in everything we do we can look each other in the eye that we have to do the right thing (on and off the pitch),” said the former Barcelona B coach, who was among those who nurtured Spanish midfield maestro Andres Iniesta, a two-time Euro and 2010 World Cup champion.
“The second is commitment. Everybody must have the commitment to do their best for the national team, the players, the staff, the people in the federation. Everyone must be committed so that we are able to achieve the aims that we are working for,” he said.
“The third and final one is courage. We have to make decisions in the way we want to play, in the way we want to organize. In a national team when you have to make changes, you need courage,” he stressed.
Capellas said he does not prepare for a match or an opponent with a defeatist outlook, saying: “I am coach that I never lose a game before a game, maybe after. But I always think before a game that I always have the chance to win the game.”
With the offensive-oriented football he has in mind, the Spanish tactician said he wants players “who are smart, fast thinking, who can handle the pressure. Players who have a high technical level.
“We want to play more from the back and build up. We want to press more and bring the ball closer to the goal to create scoring chances. We want to avoid playing long balls without making sense. We want better ball position. We want to run more.”
Given these rigorous demands, Capellas said that “it is now up to me to find the right players to achieve this. And I already have scouted a lot of them and some quality with the way we want to play.”
The early fruits of Capellas’ tinkering showed in the Pinoy booters’ closely-fought match against Tajikistan in the battle for third place in the Merdeka Cup in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia last month, narrowly losing 3-4 in a penalty shootout after battling their fancied foes to a scoreless draw in regulation.
He said he is more of a one-match-at-a-time mentor that doesn’t look far ahead so declined to say something about the Nationals’ participation in the Mitsubishi Electric Cup, the AFF Men’s Football Championship, in December.
“I won’t speculate about what will happen in the Mitsubishi Electric Cup but what I am more concerned about is our next opponent, Thailand,” said Capellas of the powerhouse host Thais, whom they face on Friday at the start of the 50th King’s Cup in Songkhla, Thailand.
They are scheduled to leave tomorrow for the four-nation tourney also featuring Tajikistan against Syria on Friday, with the winners of each match battling for the championship on Oct. 14.
