Mumbai City coach plans vada pav treat for Neymar 

The date on which Mumbai City will host Saudi Arabian club Al Hilal for the former's home AFC Champions League fixture is yet to be announced, but the coach and players of the Indian club can’t keep calm at the thought of playing against Brazilian superstar Neymar. The captain of the Samba boys ended his six-year association with Paris St Germain to move to the oil-rich Gulf kingdom earlier this month. 

Des Buckingham, the young British coach of Mumbai City, told the media in jest after the draw: ‘’We will have to introduce him to the Mumbai favourite, vada pav. We will have to introduce him to some of the local favourite foods here and sees how he enjoys that.’’ An outfit of the City group of clubs, Mumbai City won the ISL Winners’ Shield last season to qualify for the AFC showpiece.   

The group stage draw, conducted in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday, threw up a windfall for the Indian club as soon as the clubs for Group D were announced — Al Hilal (Saudi), Mumbai City (India), Nassaji Mazandaran (Iran) and Navbahor (Uzbekistan). The group stage matches of the league will be played between 18 September and 12 December, fixtures for which will be announced soon. 

Incidentally, Mumbai City was in line to rub shoulders with at least one mega footballing icon later this year — either Neymar (Al Hilal), Cristiano Ronaldo (Al Nassr) or Karim Benzema (Al Ittihad) as all three clubs will be part of the continental league. The Saudi Pro League (SPL) has splashed the cash this season to rope in a glittering array of superstars and coaches to try and upscale their league to be at par with the Big Five of the European leagues. 

Rahul Behke, captain of the Indian club, said there were a few Ronaldo fans in the team who were hoping to draw Al Nassr so that they could test themselves against CR7. ‘’Some were big Ronaldo fans so they wanted Al Nassr. We all were excited about getting any one of the teams, and we got Al Hilal, so we are super excited about that,’’ he said. 

Of course, Al Hilal will not be only about Neymar, given the presence of number of former English Premier League stars such as Kalidou Koulibaly, Ruben Neves and Aleksandar Mitrovic in its ranks.

Mumbai City will be playing their home matches at Shree Shiv Chhatrapati Sports Complex in Pune instead of their ISL home base in Mumbai.