Lluís Planagumà, Vissel's new coach, is looking for a “more aggressive” team

Tokyo, 24 Mar Barcelona's Lluís Planagumà, the new interim coach of Japan's Vissel Kobe, said today that he is looking for Andrés Iniesta's team to be “more aggressive and competitive” to reverse its disappointing start to the season in the Japanese first division. Planagumà, 41, who has previously coached Granada, Hercules or the lower categories of Villarreal and Espanyol, has been appointed as Vissel's new coach on an interim basis following the dismissal last Sunday of Japan's Atsuhiro Miura. The change in the Vissel bench, where former Barcelona players Sergi Samper and Bojan Krkic and the Japanese international Yuya Osako also play, takes place with the club in sixteenth place, after seven games played, and without knowing the victory yet. “I am very confident in everything we can do to win games,” said the Catalan coach, who also stressed that he takes over the team “with more than 20 years of experience in football” and after having worked for three years in the Japanese league. “I don't wonder if I'm going to be in the position temporarily or if I can be there until the end of the season. My priority is to work hard to win each match,” said Planagumà this Thursday at a telematic press conference, his first appearance before the media since taking office. The coach stressed that Vissel Kobe has “footballers with a very high technical level” and “one of the best players in football history”, so his team “must control matches through possession”. But Vissel “must do more than that,” said Planagumà, adding that his team “must be more passionate, more aggressive and more competitive.” On an offensive level, he said that his goal is “to generate more chances and to be able to attack quickly as well”, while in the defensive phase, he will try to make the team “more compact and more aggressive”, as well as “more competitive with set pieces”. “We are going to give our best version to make the fans proud of the team,” said Planagumà, who also stressed that the team could have won some of its last matches although it didn't because of “details” and because “football is sometimes unfair”. Before being appointed coach of the first team, Planagumà was responsible for training players at the Kobe club, and had led FC Imabari of the Japanese third division, in his first professional experience outside Spain. The man from Barcelona joins two other Spanish coaches who are currently training in the Japanese league, Ricardo Rodríguez, in the Urawa Reds, and Albert Puig, in FC Tokyo. CHIEF ahg/og