New York City Football Head Coach Ronny Deila has revealed the Club must ‘enjoy the moment’ as they prepare for the first leg of their Concacaf Champions League semifinal tie against Seattle Sounders.
The Boys in Blue are participating in their first-ever Concacaf Champions League semifinal, and will take to Lumen Field on Wednesday night knowing a place in the final awaits the winner. Speaking ahead of the game Deila confirmed he is motivated to forge new ground for the Club but stressed they must enjoy the moment.
“Maybe we are too motivated [to make history],” Deila said. “Again, we must enjoy the moment, enjoy that we are here. There’s a lot of teams sitting at home not here. We are here because we have been good. We have to understand that we get the best performance when we attack the moment and see what we get instead of thinking too much.
“We can't do anything about the results. We can't do anything about what Seattle is coming with. We can put out a very good performance and if we do that we are a very good football team. For me, it's the same message that we have had the whole year; be a good version of ourselves and we will cause problems for anybody, even Seattle. We have to go out and play our game and fight together and try to get us the best result possible.”
Deila also confirmed he holds no reservations about Lumen Field and the prospect of his team playing on artificial turf during the first leg.
“I'm not concerned about anything,” he said. “You know, we are very competent. The team played so many times on artificial turf and I think we’ve had good performances every time. In New England we’ve played on it three or four times and we’ve done well. I think we like to play on artificial turf so that's a good thing for us. We know it's a game of 180 minutes and it's important to know also their strength is to play at home. It's important for us to defend well of course tomorrow that we that we can get away with just the best result as possible to play home in New York.”
