New York City Football Club Head Coach Ronny Deila has demanded calm and focus from his players ahead of their Concacaf Champions League game against Comunicaciones on Tuesday.
The Boys in Blue enter the second leg with a 3-1 aggregate advantage following last week’s game in Hartford, Connecticut. Goals from Taty Castellanos, Maxi Moralez, and Santiago Rodríguez gave NYCFC their advantage as they head to Guatemala, but Deila was keen to stress that the job is not yet done and his players must show the right attitude.
“I don't think it’s easy to be complacent in this situation,” he said. “We know this is a tough result – 2-0 and we are out. I think it's the opposite. We have to keep calm. We have to focus on the right things - the match plan, our tasks - to produce a good performance because that's the only way to get the result we want.
“I think the group knows these things. We saw at the weekend [against Montréal] we were 2-0 up and suddenly 2-1 and then we were under pressure and we come back again. We need to be prepared mentally and physically, have a clear plan and execute. If you do that and you lose then you have done your best. If you don’t do what you agreed to do and lose it is not acceptable. We know that we do things right and we have a really good chance to go through. We put ourselves in a good situation after the first half.”
Elsewhere, Deila also confirmed there is likely to be some squad rotation for Tuesday’s game as NYCFC look to manage what has been a busy start to the campaign.
“I think there is going be a little bit of rotation,” he said. “It’s always like that when you play so many games. We have to use the training today to see where people are and then talk with each other and try to find the right team for tomorrow. What's good is that we have almost the whole squad available and that's a good thing. We have so many good football players so I'm not very worried overly concerned about that.”
