Last season was a very forgettable one for Hyderabad FC. With the club unable to pay salaries on time, there was an exodus of players and the side was penalised with a transfer ban.
That showed on the results and Hyderabad, which had won the Indian Super League (ISL) title just two years earlier, finished at the bottom of the table last season.
At one stage, there was even talk of the club shutting shop.
Now with the B.C. Jindal Group acquiring the club and offering it a lifeline, Hyderabad is in a hurry to get ready for the ISL’s new season.
“We are in a big hurry now, there’s no time, we’ve been working day and night. Hopefully, all the hard work will help the team,” Hyderabad FC’s head coach Thangboi Singto told Sportstar. “Very soon, everything will be announced and then people will think…ah, Hyderabad is alive.”
So has Hyderabad began settling players’ dues?
“I think it has started, it is going well in terms of everything. Whatever is remaining is being expedited, the old owners and the new owners are working together, they are trying to help all the players, I think in a few days everything will be done and hopefully, we’ll have a good start.”
Hyderabad will open its ISL campaign away against Bengaluru FC on September 19 and many will closely watching how the side has managed to put the pieces together.
“We want to do much better that what we did last time. We haven’t said, ‘okay this is the target’, we’ll go slowly because we are yet to fill the foreign player slots… the process is very close,” Singto added.
“Of course, every team wants to be champion, wants to be in the semifinal but you have to be realistic,” said Singto, an assistant coach with Kerala Blasters a few years ago.
“There is a lot of competition for the top six now, we have the new Mohammedan Sporting, last year Punjab FC came in … we are like a new entity, in the sense that though Hyderabad is playing its fifth year, we have sort of restarted.”
Convincing the fans to fill the stadium at home could also be a tough task.
“We do have our very loyal fans. And now, we could reach out, connect with them again to share our vision, our plans for the future, then hopefully slowly we will get them back,” said Singto.
“It won’t be easy because in this situation, rebuilding takes time but we are in the right process.”
