Argentina's Alejandro Sabella is excited to be in India for his first international assignment and debut as coach, and said he and his team are "very serious" about their friendly against Venezuela at the Salt Lake Stadium on September 2.


Argentine coach Alejandro Sabella at the Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose
International airport in Kolkata yesterday. Pic/Bikash Sadhu

"It's good... very good to be here. I've heard a lot about Kolkata and India from my colleague (assistant coach Julian Camino, who played for East Bengal in 1988)," Sabella told MiD DAY as he emerged along with 16 members of the Argentina team from the customs area of the Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport in Kolkata yesterday. Thankfully, unlike most of his Argentine colleagues, Sabella is quite fluent in English. And despite the long journey of roughly 33 hours, wherein they traveled from Buenos Aires to San Pablo and from there to Dubai before landing in Kolkata, Sabella looked quite fresh, as he continued: "Yes, this is my first official match for Argentina and I'm not approaching it in a casual manner. I am very serious about this Kolkata match. Not only me, our entire team is serious about this match."

Sabella sure knows quite a bit about the football-crazy Kolkata public. "I know Diego (Maradona) has visited this city earlier and I know the kind of crazy for football this city has," he said.

Sabella was tightlipped about his team combination, but spoke at length about his trump cardu00a0-- Lionel Messi.u00a0

"I can't say anything regarding the team combination... sorry. But ya, Lionel Messi is our hero. He's simply superb. He's not just Argentina's hero, he's the world's best player. He's a world football icon. He knows his job and we all are looking up to him to deliver," said Sabella.

Even as the majority of the Argentine footballers arrived here yesterday, a few more like Sergio Aguero, Pablo Zabaleta, Nicolas Burdisso, Jonas Gutierrez, Fedrico Fernandez and Ricardo Alvarez will be arriving early Tuesday morning, followed by Martin Demichelis, Angel Di Maria, Eduardo Salvio and Gonzalo Higuain.

Messi however is expected to be in Kolkata only early Wednesday morning after completing his Barcelona
fixture against Villarreal late last night.