Star Melbourne Victory midfielder Marcos Flores cannot wait to get stuck into his old team Adelaide United at Etihad Stadium on Friday night.
Star Melbourne Victory midfielder Marcos Flores cannot wait to get stuck into his old team Adelaide United at Etihad Stadium on Friday night.
Flores spent the 2010-11 season with the Reds, scoring nine goals from 31 matches and winning the Johnny Warren Medal in the process.
After leaving Adelaide to spend some time with Chinese Super League outfit Henan Jianye FC, Victory pulled off one of the coups of the Hyundai A-League pre-season by signing up the Argentinean.
And while Flores is keen to make amends for his side’s disappointing start to the new campaign, reacquainting himself with some old team-mates also has him excited.
“I feel so good that we are going to play against them,” Flores said after training at Gosch’s Paddock on Tuesday.
“I was so happy at this club, I have ex team-mates there, I don’t want to talk with anyone (prior to the match).
“I want to go, play hard, fight and after 90 minutes I’m going to start chatting again with them (Adelaide players),” he quipped.
But if the Reds think Flores will go easy on them because he used to play for them, they better think again.
“They know I’m going to play 110 percent against them, they know how bad I want to win,” Flores said.
“I can’t wait (on) Friday to listen to the whistle of the ref.”
Flores said he and his team-mates were determined to get Victory’s first points of the season this week after two losses in a row to start 2012-13.
“I promise myself, I promise my team, I promise the supporters we are going to overcome this satiation,” Flores said.
“We just need this time and we need the support … the only thing we have to do is fight and try to hurt the opposition.”
Victory went through an energetic training session on Tuesday and Flores was confident that same competitive spirit would reap the side reward against Adelaide.
“You can see in our training, now we are fighting for a spot, every (one of the) 22 players have the same chance to play,” Flores said.
“If you see the training, how hard we fight each other … this is going to be a grand challenge for us.
“I didn’t sleep the last 48 hours, now with this training … I am so happy for training we have today, we hurt each other so that is a good thing because we want to hurt the opponents.
“Today I saw blood in the faces of my team-mates and that is something that gives me confidence to say I am in one really strong group and we are going to make it work.”