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SAFC Coaches and Players Ready for Season

By San Antonio FC Communications, 02/15/19, 4:15PM CST

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Annual Media Day Brings Excitement for Opening Night

On Thursday, San Antonio FC players and coaches took part in the club’s annual media day following team training. The day allows for team production staff to shoot photos and videos and they acquire commercial and promotional assets for the season, while it also gives an opportunity for both internal and external media to chat with the team on the upcoming season.

The mood of the day was laced with excitement and was filled with smiles and laughs as players participated in song guessing games, juggling contests and hype video shoots. Right below the Sky Suite at Toyota Field, midfielder Jack Barmby spoke to local media and outlined his thoughts on the preseason so far and the way the team is shaping up.

“In preseason, you have to work on the principles of how you’re attacking and how you’re defending,” he said. “It’s good for us to play these games and stay healthy, but everyone is excited for the season to kick-off. We’ve been working a lot on attacking play. We have strong attacking players and hopefully we will be able to excite fans. We want fans to come out and see goals, so it is going really well so far.”

Goalkeeper and San Antonio native Matt Cardone echoed Barmby’s statements, reiterating that the players are excited and energetic for the start of the season. With many new faces in both defense and up front, Cardone knows the preseason is a perfect time to get the roster to gel and buy into the system that head coach Darren Powell is implementing.

One of the new faces, Jonathan Viscosi, joins Cardone in the goalkeeping ranks for SAFC this season. Cardone is thrilled with how the pair has trained together so far as the team builds up to the start of the campaign.

“I really like his energy,” Cardone said of Viscosi. “He has been really great to train with. He is a really good communicator and it should be a great year working together. “

Many of the new faces – like Viscosi -- are integrating themselves within the squad quickly as the team determines and works on the style of play for the 2019 season. Powell and his staff looked to bring in the types of players to fit that mentality in the offseason, and so far, it seems to be taking shape. Powell spoke on media day about how that process had already begun.

“We have had some good players come in,” said Powell. “We looked for players that could fit our style of play. We are still finalizing our roster and could make some additions, but we are really pleased with the guys here so far -- with their application, their intent and their competitiveness.”

“The coaches have done their homework on players that fit the system,” said Barmby. “We have good strikers and good wingers, but in addition, we have players that can defend which is huge because you need to play as a team.”

Players and coaches spoke at length during media day about how the team was looking to establish their style of play for the season. In previous years, San Antonio has always had a strong defense and a clinical counterattacking style of play that has produced exciting moments on the field since the start of 2016. The technical staff has prepared for the upcoming season by tailoring that style of play to bring the most out of the current players brought in to the club.

Powell and new assistant coach Alen Marcina have worked tirelessly in preseason to help the players learn and perfect that style of play as the club prepares for its second preseason match this weekend. In any event, the emphasis will always be on both sides of the ball as the team prepares to face opponents in the regular season.

“We always talk about both sides of the ball,” said Powell. “We set ourselves up with what we want to do when we have the ball and how we break the opposition down, and we present those ideas to the players. The other side of that is that we want to be very difficult to break down and hard to get through.”

No matter the style of play on the field, Cardone insists this is a group that will work for the badge. The goalkeeper has played with many teammates during his time with the club, and this is a group that he knows will give full effort from kick-off to the final whistle of each match.

“I think you can expect 100 percent from us every game,” said Cardone. “We are going to bring that passion and that drive every game to get a result.”

 “I don’t see why we can’t be that good,” Barmby echoed. “Everyone is aiming for the same thing. We should aim high and see how far we can get.”

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