Manager praises team after victory in final Brazil fixture
Grecians manager Paul Tisdale was pleased to end the tour of Brazil on another positive note with a 3-1 win against Rio Cricket e Associação Atlética.The stakes were a little less serious against the amateur side than they had been against Fluminense and Tupi, yet it offered Tis a chance to keep working on the formation and squad in an entertaining friendly fixture.
“It was another very enjoyable game,” said Tis. “They were three games that we knew very little about until we got here, in terms of the opposition and where we were playing.
“They have all been very different. We had the celebration game on Sunday with Fluminense, then we had the tough encounter against Tupi, and now a good game of football [against Rio Cricket e Associação Atlética].
“I’m very pleased to say that we have got through the games with few injuries – Jordan Moore-Taylor being the only possible worry – but we’ve got through it. We won games, we scored some goals, and I’m very pleased with the way the players played.
“While we’re here, we have engaged in the type of football and involved ourselves in the type of sport – which sounds strange but it is a different of sport playing football here.
“We got into it, and the three young-guns scored the goals in the second half – it’s a good finish to the tour.”
The players fly back to England on Sunday and Paul is under no illusions that they will need to quickly adjust back to the reality of playing football in England again – indeed, Swansea City are pre-season visitors at SJP on Tuesday.
But he is confident that the team will take nothing but positive experiences from having played lively games against accommodating hosts in South America, and that it will only stand them in good stead as they make the final tweaks to the preparation for the 2014/15 campaign.
He continued: “We’ve really enjoyed the experience. We will have to get back into pragmatic League 2-mode pretty quickly – let’s speak practically.
“Our challenge will be taking the football we have shown in the last week back into League 2. We have been suited to playing against Fluminense and Tupi – but it’s no good being suited to that and not to League 2.
“We’ve got to get the balance right and we have to go back home and do the business there too, and find a way of making our football work.
“So we’ve done ourselves no harm over here – we’ve made ourselves a lot of friends and I think we have shown that English football teams can play in a way that is not normally perceived to be the English way.”