ISL 2022-23: We’ll give our everything for the badge: Kerala Blasters FC head coach Ivan Vukomanovic

Kerala Blasters FC head coach Ivan Vukomanovic has stated that his team will give everything to go all the way in the upcoming season of the Hero Indian Super League. The Tuskers had finished the previous season as the runners-up after they had come up with a fine show.

Vukomanovic’s men had finished in fourth place in the standings and went on to beat Jamshedpur FC in the semifinals. However, they could not cross the final hurdle against Hyderabad FC as they lost on penalties.

In fact, not many had put their money on Kerala Blasters FC to qualify for the finals but they were able to prove their critics wrong.

Speaking on the team’s objective ahead of the new season, Ivan Vukomanovic said in the pre-match press conference, “Hero ISL is such a nice competition because of the fact that anybody can beat anybody. Last year, if you look in our case, nobody expected us to reach the finals especially after we had such a dry period of matches without any huge results yet we reached the finals where nobody expected to see us.”

He added, “I think this year, it will be the same. We can see some surprises, some disappointments. Of course, the teams who are capable of managing the season in the long term can achieve nice things this year because this year will be completely different as we’ll have six spots for playoffs.”

As Vukomanovic was able to lead the team to the final of the previous season, he will become the first Kerala Blasters FC coach to manage the team in two consecutive seasons. However, Vukomanovic feels it doesn’t add any kind of extra pressure on him.

He said, “No because it just proves that the organization you work with is consistent. With the process, you believe in and you work on a project that everybody knows what needs to be done. Now, we have consistency in the work, players have adapted to the work, the technical, medical, and support staff are in great coordination with the management and everything goes smoothly.”

He continued, “For us, there is no pressure, there is always a pleasure because the players and we are doing something that we love, so when you have this kind of atmosphere and situation, you have a positive mindset and nice things tend to happen. We believe in our objectives, we believe in our ideas, and we will see where it takes us.”

Kerala Blasters FC will kick off their ISL 2022-23 campaign against Emami East Bengal in the season’s curtain raiser on October 7 at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, Kochi.