#3 Smooth transition from Habas to Molina
Antonio Habas won the league in the first season and took Kolkata to the semi-final last year, and it was a big loss for the club to see him move to FC Pune City. But the team had an able replacement in the form of Molina; the Spaniard had won the treble in Hong Kong with Kitchee before the switch to the ISL side
Kolkata have barely looked any different with the change in manager. That is largely down to the fact that they retained the spine of the squad that played under Habas.
Borja Fernandez, Ofentse Nato and Arnab Mondal have been with Kolkata from the outset while Iain Hume, Helder Postiga, Javi Lara, Tiri and Sameehg Doutie were all part of the squad last year. In many ways, only Henrique Sereno and Debjit Majumder were new players out of the ones that played regularly.
Also, Molina’s style was not too different from what Habas employed. Kolkata still kept possession as much as possible, they still moved the ball around patiently and they still never looked in a hurry - much like the first two years.
For the Spanish manager, the biggest advantage has been the fact that the core of the squad is Spanish-speaking as well. That ensured that he could bed in seamlessly, even though his knowledge of English is not in question.
The presence of Borja, Lara and Tiri, along with Postiga - who has played a lot of football in Spain - helped the manager immensely.
