Manolo Marquez hasn’t had the best of starts as the dual head coach of the Indian national team and FC Goa in the Indian Super League (ISL).
At the start of the month, Marquez’s India was held to a goalless draw to lowly-ranked Mauritius before losing 0-3 to Syria in the Intercontinental Cup.
This was followed by his ISL club Goa going down 1-2 to Jamshedpur FC in the opening game of the ISL season. Goa took the lead in the first half but couldn’t translate its dominance into more goals before Jamshedpur mounted a comeback to win the game late in extra time.
“Today is perhaps the day I’ve been most angry since I first arrived in India nearly five years ago,” said Marquez.
Goa had 62% possession but could only muster five shots on target.
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“We cannot allow one performance like the one we had today, especially from the foreigners. The foreigners were walking on the pitch throughout the game,” he said. ”You know that the Indian players need them, and if the foreigners are walking on the pitch and playing their own game, we will have problems. All of them.”
While he picked out Brison Fernandes for praise, he added, “Speaking well about someone is difficult because we performed very, very badly as a team.”
Marquez, who led FC Goa to its first playoffs since 2021, hopes the defeat serves as a wake-up call for the Gaurs, drawing parallel to his time at Hyderabad FC.
“Maybe you don’t believe me, but when the score was 1-1 and we were observing from the sidelines, I mentioned on the bench that, ‘If we lose the game, it will be positive for us.’ Even when Hyderabad FC won the ISL Cup in 2021-22 when I was there, we lost the first game against Chennaiyin FC, and the team responded very well. Let’s see the character of the team now,” said Marquez.
Goa’s next match is away to newly-promoted Mohammedan SC on Saturday.
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