With pre-season officially coming to a close we sat down with Milan Blaga to talk about the hard work that has gone into preparing for the coming season and the vision behind trying to gain sustained success for the Club. Milan talks at length about the style of play, the coaching team, developing youth players and the overall mood in the Club.

Rovers FC pre-season came to an end on Thursday and you now enter the final days building up to competitive football. What have you made of this pre-season?

We’ve all worked so hard over the last 9 weeks. But it’s a pleasure when you have so many people who are ready to put in the work and improve. I’m not only talking about the players, but everyone at the Club who’s been involved.

It has not been easy navigating through the COVID period and lack of football but our manager Chris Rousseau has done a particularly good job in what’s been a difficult period for all football clubs.

In terms of training and preparations, the sessions have been at very high intensity. How much are you enjoying the challenge of preparing the squad? You seem to be enjoying it a lot.

We have changed the way we run our sessions this year and I feel like everyone has enjoyed it. As you say, we’ve often worked at high intensity and that’s what I wanted to implement for some time. Of course it requires a lot of effort and patience to implement… But once we started seeing results and benefits from it – everyone realised that it has paid off. At the end of the day, you play in the way that you train and we went through hell during the pre-season. We obviously want to play with intensity, so that’s what we’ve done almost every day.

It’s also important to note that our coaching team expanded this year and that extra help has allowed us to pay attention to many more details than before. We now have more people working alongside the players and supporting the technical side.

The coaching team has a very good relationship in terms of the organisation of our training sessions, which I think is also something that the players feel now. The new way of training is hard, but at the same time they feel the club is behind them and I think that helps them feel that they can go all the way and work with real intensity because everything is under control.

A new head coach, Juel Ah-kong, has also arrived and he is settling in with the team and the rest of the technical staff. Tell us some more about the technical team and coaches and how the setup works.

I like people who have ability but are also fully motivated to work hard. Juel is certainly that person. He brings experience, hard work and tons of passion whenever he steps on the field. 

We have looked to integrate people from within the Club, people with skills and a desire to continue learning. Our team has grown and we are working and collaborating closer together. 

We have also made sure that there is close collaboration between our senior and academy coaches as we always believe strongly in youth development. 

Today our technical team is made up of many people and I personally think that’s very important for the club, because I won’t be at Rovers one day and when that day comes, I want to leave it as a well-organised structure.

Where do you expect the team to improve?

We have identified some key areas that we feel have room for improvement. For example in how we take care of the ball and how we move without it. We want to control the game better – in all areas of the pitch. We want more intensity and want to impose our game on the opponent by bringing the game to them with pressing and recovering the ball quickly.

This obviously needs time to bear fruit, but we’ve seen a lot of improvement. I like what I’ve seen from the team on an emotional and competitive level. The head coach will continue to work on these principles with the team and we will continue to improve on them and hopefully soon that identity will be visible in our matches.

How important are the new signings?

First of all, we already had a very strong group of players. That was clear in the manner in which we dominated the 3rd division and started last season in the Championship strongly.

Secondly, I have to say the manager and Chairman have been brilliant. The reality is that we started pre-season with a clear plan regarding our squad but in football you need to be ready to react as anything can happen. Players get injuries, they leave – unexpected things can happen. We looked to solve these issues as much as possible from within our youth setup and I’m really happy with the young players that we have promoted to the senior team this season. The youth coaches have done a really good job with these young players up until now and I am convinced they will go on to have noticeable football careers and we hope to offer them that platform.

We don’t have foreign players as you may see at some other clubs. Our focus is on creating a strong young core group of Seychellois working together with a few older more experienced players. Some of these have come from our academy and others were brought in based on these same principles. Our project is for the long term and we hope to see this group of players grow and develop together so that they can deliver sustained success for many years.

You’ve had a chance now to work with the new signings Shu’aib Ernesta, Nick Labiche and Norvil Gaspard. What do you think they can bring to Rovers?

We reacted brilliantly by signing a very good young player in Nick Labiche. We felt he was important to help us implement the style of play we want to bring to the field. He is still very young and he will have a great platform here to develop and hopefully win some trophies along the way!

Norvil comes in with lots of experience and quality. His many years experience of playing in the top tier is going to be priceless especially for the younger players in our team. He’s played over 100 games with first division teams, he’s played in the Premier League for many years. Norvil brings stability and we’re really happy to have him with us as he is a joy to work with! 

Shu’aib Ernesta is a very good player with lots of potential. We signed him because we felt he had great mobility in the final third, lots of energy and high work ethic. We are looking forward to working with him and helping him develop into a dangerous attacker.

As a team, we know we don’t have the best squad in the country. That’s not where we are yet and we know that, but the squad we have means that nobody can tell us we can’t win our next game. That’s the mentality. Nobody can stop us as long as we go into every game thinking: ‘We can win this.’

There’s not long to go until the first competitive game of the season. How excited are you?

I feel relaxed – for me, it’s the time after a match that’s always harder than the time before it. I can’t get to sleep after the game. It’s always really difficult to deal with that post-match adrenaline. I’m not just relaxed right now but I’m also happy and confident, I like proper games and the proper games start now. Nale Rovers!