Lack of proper pre-season proves to be Abahani’s undoing

New Radiant Sporting Club head coach Oscar Bruzon was a relieved man after salvaging three vital away points in Dhaka but the Spaniard, at the same time, made no effort hiding the fact that a proper pre-season in their domestic league gave them an advantage in Wednesday's AFC Cup encounter against Abahani Limited. The home side enjoyed a better opening half but couldn't carry out the game with the same intensity after resumption. Oscar, at the beginning of his post-match press conference, said he had expected Abahani to have "tough times" in the last half an hour due to "lack of competition they are having in the Bangladesh league".

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"We are having an advantage, I can’t hide it. We have the advantage of four weeks of pre-season. We are already competing in our domestic league. I know that Abahani started their pre-season three weeks back and they were not playing official games. One team which are only coming into pre-season and not competing is very tough to compete in 90 minutes at the same level," said Oscar. The 40-year old added, "Even they were trying to use wings but we knew that they couldn’t focus full 90 minutes with the same level. So our strategy was to control the game through the ball. I think we did it, you see in the last 20 minutes they didn’t press us. We are lucky little bit of that." Oscar concluded, "If Abahani had competed here (AFC Cup) during the middle of their domestic competition, and not in pre-season, they would be even tougher for us."