Harbour View pleased with preparation

Kwesi Mugisa, Staff Reporter

Defending Caribbean club champions Harbour View have expressed satisfaction with preparations so far, ahead of what is expected to be a tough match-up with Mexican Primera Division side, Pumas UNAM, in the CONCACAF Champions League, beginning this week.

Harbour View will host the Mexican team in the opening leg of the fixture on Thursday at the Harbour View Mini-Stadium, starting at 7 p.m.

"Preparations have been going extremely well and we are satisfied with what we have been able to achieve so far," said Harbour View manager, Ann-marie Massey.

"It's going to be difficult picking the final squad based on the fact that we have so many capable players, but we are feeling confident," she added.

Pounded 5-0

The last time the 'Stars of the East' were involved in a major club competition, things did not go very well. Despite holding United States Major League Soccer (MLS) team DC United to a 1-1 draw at the Harbour View Mini- Stadium, they were pounded 5-0 in the return leg at the RFK Stadium in Washington, DC.

Since then, however, Harbour View have secured the services of experienced Brazilian technical director, Waldemar de Oliviera, and that, they hope, will boost their chances of making a strong statement at the regional level.

"When we faced DC, I don't think we were as organised as we should have been. We had key players missing and I don't think we did enough homework," Massey said.

"They were far better prepared than us and as a result, we lost the way that we did," she added.

While admitting that the real evidence will be in the results attained by the new technical director, she has been impressed with how things are progressing.

"Watching him work, he does a lot of things differently, not just in terms of the players' physical fitness, but in terms of their mental preparation.

"From that perspective, I expect to be better prepared than a couple of months ago," she said.

The CONCACAF Champions League has replaced the CONCACAF Champions Cup and will boast a new format. The competition will initially involve 24 teams, featuring a preliminary round, which will eventually reduce the field to 16. The teams will then be separated into four groups of four. Following the group stage, knockout rounds will be used from the quarter-finals onward.