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Florent Malouda, John Arne Riise and Roberto Carlos, that’s the enviable line up of marquee players Delhi Dynamos assembled ahead of the second edition of the Hero Indian Super League. While there was this growing sense of excitement about the trios descend to the event, there were also sections of people who were skeptical of where these legends would fit in.
All three of them had excelled on the left side of the field over their careers and thus it was anybody’s guess who would be favoured to fill in those two slots down in defence and midfield respectively. In either case Delhi’s strength was supposed to be that flank.
Two matches in to the tourney and the picture has become clearer! Surprisingly though, neither of the aforementioned have been deployed on the left side of the field. While Riise has played as a centre back, Malouda is playing behind the strikers.
The replacements, well they have been brilliant to say the least. If it was Vinicius in the opener against Goa, last season’s top scorer Gustavo Dos Santos made Delhi look extremely formidable down that side of the field. In fact their only goal of the campaign so far came as Dos Santos cut-in slid through a pass for Hans Mulder to crash an attempt at goal. The trajectory was intercepted by Manuele Blasi’s hand, leading referee Tejas Nagvenkar to point to the spot.
Talking about their expertise down the left, manager Roberto Carlos exclaimed, “It’s always good to have a problem of plenty. I have now started with Vinicius and Dos Santos in two of our games and both of them have done really well.”
About not playing any of the marquee players in their preferred positions, he added, “Both Malouda and Riise are massively experienced, thus I would ideally have them control the game from the centre. As for me, as I mentioned before the tournament, I will only come on when the need arises- appearances away from the dugout will be sporadic to say the least.”
With Robin Singh returning for their next game against Pune, there are speculations that Carlos might revert to the traditional 4-4-2 and thus would be able to start with only one of Vinicius, Dos Santos and another enterprising midfielder- Souvik Chakraborty; either way he maintains “having a problem of plenty is always good”. We wouldn’t disagree, especially after the game vs Chennaiyin, would we?
