Following another great performance by Flamengo this season, which resulted in a 4-0 victory over Nova Iguaçu, Zé Ricardo gave a press conference at the Moça Bonita Stadium in Bangu, Rio de Janeiro.
The coach spoke about the options for the team in this Saturday's (04) match, resting some players who showed higher levels of fatigue. Among other things, Zé praised Mancuello, who scored two goals in the match, the second being a real stunner, and also commented on the team's positive start to 2017.
See the main excerpts:
Team changes
Some players showed a bit more fatigue than usual for it being the start of the season, especially Rômulo and Diego. They are fine, they have recovered quite well, even training this morning at the training center, in a less intense way than in a game. We remained on high alert so that we wouldn't lose two players so important to us.
Mancuello's new role
Mancu is an extremely intelligent player. His game reading ability makes adapting to the position easy. Logically, he will still face big challenges ahead, but we are satisfied with his performance so far. We hope he will indeed be as important as we think he will be.
Start of season
We haven't started the Carioca Championship winning three matches since 2010 or 2011. We have teams that have been working for almost two months with excellent, experienced coaches who know how to build a team. We made a plan so that we could work within the games with a lot of ball possession, as is happening. We are managing to put into practice everything we have trained.
Flamengo's reinforcements
Our reinforcements were well-timed and added a lot to the team, especially in terms of technical skills. As a result, we're managing to move the team forward. We still have a lot to improve, and we're always aware of what can be enhanced. Logically, we're not at 100%, but what we've shown so far has been quite satisfactory.
Strength of the cast
I think that's the idea. A big team with ambition like Flamengo needs a qualified squad. With that in mind, we need to give them playing time. In a coherent way, ensuring Flamengo doesn't lose its strength, we'll try to do that. With Damião's entry, for example, we were able to see another aspect of the 4-4-2 formation, because Paolo likes to move out of the box to orchestrate plays. In the fourth goal, we managed to create the play originally from that side, with one player supporting and the other providing depth, exploiting Marcelo's speed on the wing. Now it's time to work and prepare to face Grêmio.