Sunil Chhetri happy with Mumbai City's pre season preparations ahead of the ISL

Mumbai City FC ace Sunil Chhetri believes their teams’ pre season tour in Dubai has helped them immensely in preparing for the ISL.

The Blue citizens who finished in seventh position last season will be hoping to put in a starkly improved performance this season. Mumbai beat the Emirates Club 1-0 in their final pre-season match before flying back to India.

Chhetri believes the hot and humid conditions in UAE will help them to play in difficult domestic conditions.

“The climate in Dubai helped our International players acclimatize to the domestic conditions, here in India. Plus Dubai has wonderful football facilities all around. Temperatures hover around 40 degree Celsius. So the conditions are definitely demanding but beneficial for us since the climate here is similar”.

The striker also felt there was nothing much he could say about Baichung Bhutia’s recent comment that Indian coach Constantine needs more time with his players to improve upon their recent results.

“Well if Baichung said that, there is nothing left to say. Obviously we are very disappointed with our recent results with the national team, but we believe we can get a positive result in our next game against Turkmenistan. It’s an away match but, but we take each match as it comes and if we play with the right spirit we can definitely get a good result”, the 31-year-old added.

Also present at the launch of football simulation game PES 2016, Road to Milan was Mumbai local boy Keegan Pereira, who will ply his trade as a left back for the Blue citizens this season. The 27 year old was excited at the prospect of working with Coach Nicolas Anelka.

“Anelka is a great coach. He is very patient with his players which is a very important quality (to have as a coach)”

The team will play its first match of the ISL 2015 against state rivals FC Pune City at Shree Shiv Chhatrapati Sports Complex in Pune on October 5th.