President’s Cup head coach Veloo (second left) speaks to his players after a training session at Padang D in Petra Jaya.
KUCHING: President’s Cup head coach S Veloo has set a quarterfinal target for Sarawak in the new season which kicks off on Feb 8 but he has plenty of work cut out.
Towards this mission, he has identified 25 players for the challenge this season. “The players are selected from the Under-21 squad, Youth Cup squad while five are new faces,” he said after a training session at Padang D in Petra Jaya on Thursday.
According to Veloo, the players have been training for two weeks where the focus was on physical and mental strength.
“We have so far played three friendly matches with the Youth Cup, President’s Cup and Super League squads and I am pretty satisfied with their performance as they have displayed tactical strategies that I have imparted to them,” said Veloo.
To further boost preparations, Veloo will take his squad to Kuala Lumpur next week to play three friendly games with UiTM Shah Alam, Negeri Sembilan and PKNS FC. He will assess the players’ capabilities in the friendlies which will also indicate how far his team could go in the new season.
However, Veloo feels that there is much room for improvement on the finishing and in beefing up the defence.
“Our main focus is to ensure that the last line of defence will not be broken easily. I do admit my boys will experience problems in getting the goals because they are still new when compared to the last season we had players like Nur Shamie, Tommy Mawat and Abdul Rahim in our line-up,” he added.
“That’s why I need to figure out something to solve these problems,” Veloo explained, that he will have to improve on the shortcomings in less than a month’s time.