The Spanish miguel angel lotina considers “a gift” the opportunity to train the Vissel Kobe and faces the challenges of the club with courage, in relegation position in the first division (J1) of the Japanese league after a bad start to the season.
“It’s a challenge, because it’s a lot responsibilitybut at the same time it is a gift”, Lotina said this Friday in his first appearance when he was presented as the new coach of the team, in which the former Barcelona players currently play. Andres Iniesta, Sergi Samper and Bojan Krkicor the Japanese international Yuya Osako.
Lotina pointed out that although the current situation “is certainly not what the fans or the club were expecting”, he faces this project with courage, which led him to resign from break that it had proposed to take temporarily and for which it had rejected other international proposals.
“As they asked me, I said yes. I didn’t hesitate for a second,” said the coach about the proposal made by Vissel.
The Meñaca coach will have his first direct contact with the dressing room today, to which he will transmit his vision of the reforms and strengthening that he considers necessary to get ahead and on which he did not want to go into detail.
“In spite of the qualifying situationthe group is a good group, eager to work, to improve and very professional,” said the coach about the “very positive” information that has reached his ears about the mood in the locker room.
Lotina takes the reins of Vissel after the Barcelona player Lluís Planagumà temporarily served as caretaker coach following the dismissal of Japan’s Atsuhiro Miura in March.
Vissel has conceded three defeats and two draws in the five games played so far in the Japanese league, the J-League.
His first meeting as a new coach will take place on Sunday, when Vissel will face osaka cherry treeseventh in the ranking and that Lotina himself coached a long time ago, a “special” game on a sentimental level, but “very important” for his new club.
The technician acknowledged that they have little margin before the game and that he will focus his guidelines on these two days on the tactical level.
The team has a very tight schedule. After Sunday’s match, starting on the 16th Vissel will have six games in 15 days in the Asian Champions League, which complicates training and will leave “a lot of workload”.
“It will be like a preseason in the tactical aspect, logically not in the physical, because there is no time between games,” said Lotina, who will focus on the guidelines focused on attack.
These meetings, together with those of the national league, have left a very tight schedule and so many games, “which have caused too many injuries”, contributing to the situation of the club, he believes.
“We will try to distribute minutes among all the players that are available to avoid more serious injuries and also so that everyone feels important and gradually picks up the philosophy of what we want” for the team, said the coach.
lotina has been five years coaching various teams in Japanfrom Cerezo and Shimizu S-Pulse in J1 to Tokyo Verdy in the second division (J2).
In this new stage, he will direct, among others, Iniesta, a player who has “suffered in Spain as a rival” and for whom he feels admiration. “He has done a lot for Spanish football,” he said.
“Obviously we have to try to get the most out of him. It is important that he is very comfortable on the field, because he is a different player,” he said of him at the appearance. “He has worked with people of a very high level, so that’s more responsibility for me,” he added.
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