PTI

Mumbai, June 7: Mumbai’s champion outfit Mahindra United are targetting a top overseas striker and an attacking medio to give them the cutting edge after managing to retain most of their players who helped them win the Federation Cup and the National Football League in the just-ended season.

“We want to recruit two top foreigners and are targetting Brazil, Ghana and South Africa to fulfill our aim of winning the AFC Cup tournament, besides the Federation Cup and NFL,” said Mahindra United’s president, Alan Durante at a media conference on Tuesday.

“We have retained most of the players who did duty for us last season. We have only lost the services of Brazilian Jose Luis Barretto, who has signed up for Mohun Bagan, Deepak Mondal, Subhash Chakraborty and Surajit Bose,” Durante said while releasing a list of names the top club has signed up.

Team manager Henry Menezes said that after having retained African striker Yusif Yakubu, the fourth-best scorer of last season with eight goals to his credit, the club was looking out for “an out and out striker and an attacking midfielder” as they go about filling up the remaining two foreigners’ slot.

About the decision of Barretto, in his early thirties, to move away back to Kolkata’s glamour outfit Bagan, Durante said the offer of a huge pay packet (undisclosed) as well as the say and share in an about-to-be-started academy had lured the Brazilian away.

“But the very fact that we have managed to keep most of the players with us shows that they are all happy with the way the club is functioning,” Durante pointed out.

The newly recruited players are: International N P Pradeep (defender, from SBT), Nicholas Rodrigues (medio, Sporting Clube de Goa, in India camp), Mohd Rafi (striker, SBT), Bhola De (medio, Tata Football Academy/Tollygunge), Chiman Apparao (medio/striker, Air-India), Humair Rahimtula (UK Academy medio/striker) and Adnan Rahimtula (UK Academy, striker).

Durante said the Rahimtula twins, though from UK, cannot be considered as foreigners as they were of Indian origin.

“There’s a clause that they have to play for a country before entering the English Premier League and they have targeted the Indian national squad to achieve this purpose,” Durante said.

The club has also included four junior players - medio Keegan Pereira, defenders Revelino Fernandes and Ullal Gosh and custodian Lihaz Koya, who has found a spot in the India under-20 camp.

“Now that Mahindra United have done well in the NFL and Federation Cup, we want to translate this victory into attracting more spectators into the Cooperage ground and bring it back to those glorious olden days of 25-30 years ago,” the MU president said.

“We are targetting school kids to whip up the passion. We are going to send one or two of our players to various schools on weekly basis to interact with budding talent and popularise the game among children between 7 and 10 years old. That’s the way Japan is going about it,” Durante said.