With confidence pumping through the Gold Coast United camp after finally reaching the summit of the Hyundai A-league, midfield maestro Zenon Caravella has declared the glamour side fears no-one in its quest to win the title.
Standing just 176cm tall, Caravella is one of the United’s smallest players, but size counts for nothing as silky skill and electric pace has seen him develop into an instrumental figure alongside captain Jason Culina in the midfield.
“At the moment we don’t fear any team in the competition and we’re quite confident going into these last four rounds,” Caravella said at training on Wednesday.
“I’m happy with the way things have been going personally, I feel like I’ve got a rhythm going at the moment and I’m just happy to be playing well and contributing my part to the team.”
Gold Coast has only lost one of its past seven outings and after Sunday’s 1-0 win over Sydney FC, Caravella said he expects nothing more than a win against Central Coast in Gosford on Friday night.
“After such a good win against Sydney it will mean nothing if we don’t get the result against Central Coast,” he said.
“We just have to keep the form that we’ve been showing in the last few weeks, keep the ball moving and play to our strengths.”
“We’d definitely like a bit of revenge against Central Coast after they beat us 3-0 last time we visited, so we’ll be going all guns blazing and hopefully get three points.” Caravella said.
In the two previous meetings with the Mariners this season, Lawrie Mckinna’s side has played a more physical style in an attempt to disrupt Gold Coast’s rhythm.
However Caravella believes his side’s speed will be enough to help it adapt to the physical pressure.
“They’re a physical side but we’ve also got some physical players and we’ll be adapting to handle that. But as I said before if we can keep the ball moving and play with the speed we’ve been playing with all season, then the physical side doesn’t come into it so much.”
As far as the run into the finals goes, Caravella said consistency will be the key as the squad begins to benefit from the structure and organisation instilled by Coach Miron Bleiberg.
“We’ve got the belief in our team now and as I said we’re playing well, we just have to keep it going and that’s probably it, consistency is the key.”
“We’ve had some great results so far, so we’ve worked ourselves back to the top of the ladder, now we’ve just got to try and stay consistent and keep ourselves there,”
“Its Round 24 now, we’ve trained together the whole year and we’ve played 24 games together, we all pretty much know what we can do and we’ve got that cohesion in the team at the moment.” Caravella said.
