Atletico de Kolkata play hosts to Mumbai City FC in the first fixture of the inaugural season of the Hero Indian Super League at the Salt Lake Stadium on Sunday.
Atletico de Kolkata will be looking for nothing but a win against Mumbai City in their opening ISL home fixture at the Salt Lake Stadium.
Kolkata, who participated in five friendlies during their training camp in Spain, will be eager to put their pre-season experience to the test against Mumbai City.
Although Kolkata are expected to play Atletico Madrid's style of Football, manger Antonio López Habas insists that his side will developing their own 'fatafati' (which means fantastic football in colloquial Bengali) style.
"We want to play in 'fatafati' style," said Habas, according to the PTI. "I want to Kolkata to play in their own style."
Despite admitting that his team are under no pressure in this opening game, the former Valencia boss insists that his team need to get a positive result in their opening home fixture.
"There is no pressure. What matters is that we are effectively prepared, but it's the 90 minutes that actually matters. We need to win the game and capture the support of the city. Result is more important for us now and we are solely focusing on that," said Habas.
Meanwhile, Mumbai City FC will be no push-overs in this game even they will be without their marquee signing Freddie Ljungberg, who picked up a calf injury during training.
"He has had a couple of training sessions in the gym but he still feels the strain in his calf. If we take a chance on this sort of surface and his injury gets worse, it could be a problem for us in the future. So I'm going to leave him out," Mumbai City boss Peter Reid revealed in the pre-match conference.
The former Manchester City and Bolton boss added that his side will be looking to record a win in their opening fixture despite them playing away from home.
"Even though it's an away game I think approaching it with the goal of only getting a point out of it is just a waste of time," he added.
Reid believes that the experience of the foreign players in the squad will help the whole team do well in the ISL.
"I think these players' experience will help us out there and all I have to say is that I have every confidence that these lads will do a really good job," he added.
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The inaugural game of the Indian Super League is set for a 7pm IST (2:30pm IST, 9:30am EDT) start with live coverage on Star Sports 2, Star Sports 3, Star Gold, Star Utsav, Asianet Movies, Suvarna Plus and Jalsha Movies in India. The game can also be streamed live in India on Starsports.com.
Audience in the US can stream the match live on foxsoccer2go, while Australian viewers can do the same on Fox Sports 1 Australia. International viewers can stream the live action on Eurosport 2 International.
