'Football is a Pandora's box'

Dubai: Al Wasl coach Diego Maradona played it cool on his side's title ambitions in a pre-season news conference at The Jumeirah Zabeel Saray Hotel on the Palm Sunday.

Answering in one line what the 1986 World Cup winner thought constituted success at Al Wasl, Maradona said: "For me success is about [always] winning the next match."

Having won an opening friendly with Ittihad Kalba 3-1 on August 28, then lost to Dibba Fujairah 2-1 last Thursday, Maradona explained: "In football someone who says they will be champion is not telling you the truth. Whoever is champion will be he, who is without injury, with many players, who are lucky, that they sometimes don't get a penalty [against them] — there are a lot of things that work to allow you to become a champion."

Maradona added: "Football is a Pandora's box. Today you win, tomorrow you lose. That's football, but we have to limit our mistakes. Less mistakes must equal more wins and defeats should stay in the past."

"Anyone can make a mistake but not a mistake that comes out of failure to understand the concept [of how we must play as a team]. Al Wasl has the capacity to make a good show on the field, we have a very good team — [but] we're not talking about champions, but [just] step by step, day-by-day."

Mistakes

Speaking about the club's two friendly matches, Maradona said: "The matches were very useful, the results were not something that made me very happy, but whatever the results you always learn from the matches. The loss was more useful to us because we now know the mistakes we have to correct. I know we have to improve our defence a lot to improve their support of midfield to go quickly forward in order to strike."

"If you let me choose I want to be champion, but many teams want to be champions. Al Wasl is working in a way that we don't want to make mistakes in defence. We need a solid back, a very good midfield and then we want to have a good collective game so no other team can be ahead of us. Keeping the ball and keeping possession is a very important priority for our players. If we have possession, our enemies will run more than us."

Asked if he would be looking to bolster his defence, Al Diego said: "If it was Mr Maradona who could decide, I would ask the club to bring in 10 defenders to have a better team. But the players we have at the moment are okay. We are working hard with them and we are in a phase of technical and tactical development, especially in defence."

"We have to try and improve players we have and separate players that are not that useful according to our way of play — 24 or 25 players is not that big an amount — we are trying to incorporate two more players of different nationalities, maybe two Argentineans, in the future."

"We are scouting for players and have to incorporate some players, but I also understand Mr Marwan Bin Byat [General Manager of the Private Office of Shaikh Majid Bin Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum and Chairman of Al Wasl Football Company] may have a purse of five million, but people want to charge 50 million. We'd rather have our own players, keep them here, treat them well so that they can give their best. In that way we have a good team. We will see how we are going to face the situation of changes in the future."

Maradona also defended Eisa Ali: "People have told me there are people in Al Wasl [who] don't like Eisa. Eisa has done a very good job in pre-season. I've confirmed him as captain to play in all teams while I'm still manager. I don't want to fight or have arguments. When we talk about Eisa, please don't touch, Eisa. Eisa is going to always play alongside Mariano Donda, Juan Manuel Olivera, Ahmad Darwesh and Majid Nasser — this is the main axis of my team."

But it appears goalkeeper Nasser may have got off on the wrong foot with Diego: "He had had a serious injury and was in this sense, born again. He cannot be called into the national team when he is not 100 per cent fit. But he took that [decision] away from me. I didn't like that, for a player to go to his national team when he's not 100 per cent having just come out of serious injury like that."