The Flaming Oranje just about managed to save themselves from relegation and finished eighth in the last edition of the I-League…

Sporting Clube de Goa’s preparations for the I-League are in full swing as they won the Goa Pro League less than a fortnight back.

“We had a brilliant start to the year by winning the Goa Pro League and we want to build up on that as we enter the I-League,” acclaimed the team’s head coach Mateus Costa in a chat with Goal.

“The preparations [for the I-League] are going on well. We were the top scorers in the Goa Pro League but we also conceded a lot of goals. So we signed Arindam [Bhattacharya] and [Dharmaraj] Ravanan to stregnthen our defence,” he added.

Sporting Goa have retained Nigerian striker Odafa Okolie, former Syrian international Mahmoud Amnah in midfield and have replaced Portuguese defender Migual Garcia with Nigerian defender Loveday Okechukwu. The fourth foreigner set to complete the club’s foreign quota is Trinidad and Tobago midfielder Densill Theobald.

“Players like Pratesh [Shirodkar], Cajetan [Fernandes] and Victorino [Fernandes] form the backbone of the team. Rowllin [Borges] has also done well in the national team (India),” he observed.

In their I-League campaign last season, Sporting failed to pick three points in their opening 13 games but miraculously turned things around by picking up a draw and five wins to gather 15 points out of a possible 18, more than any other team in the last six games, to prevent the drop.

“All that we are looking for now is to get a good start and we want to do better than last season,” Costa signed out.