EXPECT a more exciting and attacking style of football from the new-look Cebu FC with offensive-minded Turkish head coach Mehmet Kakil at the helm for the club’s campaign in the 2022 Copa Paulino Alcantara.Kakil emphasized this year that Cebu FC will be playing a more aggressive and offensive style of football, reminiscent of his style in his playing days as a legendary striker for Turkish club Hatayspor.“The Philippine mentality of football is more on defense. Most of the teams play defensively and not much attacking. In our matches we will try to play more offense. I was once a striker, that’s why I have an offense-oriented mentality,” said Kakil in Turkish, which was translated by Cebu FC midfielder Baris Tasci in English on April 20 in Cebu FC’s Media Day at the Dynamic Herb-Borromeo Sports Complex.Kakil has been tapped as head coach along with his assistant coach Levent Ozturk, also a former Hatayspor player, which is part of the partnership between Cebu FC and Hatayspor.Aside from the two coaches, Hatayspor also sent Under-21 players Mert Altinoz, Nazim Ozcan and Arda Cinkir on loan to play for Cebu FC in its exchange program.Despite the huge changes this season, Tasci is optimistic of the squad’s upcoming season after a promising run in their first season last year.“The unity and the energy of the team is good. Everyone has the same goal and that’s to win the cup and play as a team,” he said. “We always emphasize fun football because in the end we need to entertain the people. We want to play more attacking football. Last year we played more defensively. We did well but we didn’t score and got too many attacking chances.”Cebu FC’s first assignment in the 2022 Copa Paulino Alcantara is against Stallion Laguna FC on April 25 at the Philippine Football Federation (PFF) Training Center in Carmona, Cavite.“We lost twice to Stallion. This year there’s more motivation. The first game is always important. We hope to win the first game and get the momentum. The players are very hungry this year and the first game is always important so we’ll try to win that game,” said Tasci.Though both Kakil and Ozturk can only speak little to no English, they are optimistic that the language barrier won’t hinder them from communicating with the team.“There might be some language barrier but football and sports are one language,” said Kakil with a huge smile. (EKA)