By Taromane Martin
FORMER Marist FC Head Coach Mr Julianno Schemling says there were a lot of challenges faced during his first year with the club as he tries to rebuild and make the team a champion’s league side.
The Brazilian born futsal and football coach revealed this while speaking about his experience with the Telekom Soccer League club.
He also revealed some of the things that had to be done to move Marist FC from a second bottom of the table club to being an Oceania Champions League contender.
After finishing the 2014/2015 TSL season second bottom on the table with only 10 points, Marist FC together with then sponsors, Y-Sato Marine brought in Mr Schemling to steer the club back up the TSL table.
He arrived for the 2015/2016 TSL season with a three year plan to propel Marist FC back into the top of the table and compete at the Oceania Champions Leagues.
“I started working with Marist In 2015. All that we had at that time were a couple of local coaches to help me and to achieve the goals. It was a three years plan basically,” he said.
“The first year’s aim was to finish in third position in the TSL, second year win the national league and go to the OFC Champions League and then the third year keep maintaining position in the top spots and go on to the champions’ league again.
“At that time we had no facilities, training fields, shoes and balls for training. So we had to come and work together to find a place where we can develop so that we can have our own field to train.
“What we did was we started working on making a solid group and a nice environment so we can start achieving our goals for the first year.
After securing a space for training, Schemling had to work hard on installing professionalism ideas into the players which he says is a lot of work, while also getting to know the players.
“First we started trials to select all the players. After we selected the squad then I thought ok I need to get to know my players because we need to work together,” Schemling said.
“I have had some experiences with Solomon Islands players before so I knew how important it was to respect their reality, their lifestyle and their culture. So then I started visited the players’ houses to see and be able to get to know them.
“First year was challenging being a new coach in a new country with new players. We had a very young squad that was very talented.
“A lot of the players did not have experience playing in the national leagues in Solomon Islands. But we did very well in the first year and achieved our aim like we aimed for by finishing in third position during the 2015/2016 TSL Season.
“It was a lot of hard work especially in that first year as I had to teach the players about hard work, commitment and timing for training and games. But the other coaches really helped a lot and saw us starting to work and blend together as a family.
“So we had a group, we had a private place for training, we had transport and we had players showing commitment and hard work to training.
“Despite all the challenges faced in the first year was a successful one for us.” he said.
Marist FC finished the 2015/2016 season in third position with 32 points behind Western United FC 34 points and Solomon Warriors FC who finished that season in first position with 39 points.
In the next TSL season, Marist was able to finish in second position and make a return appearance at the Oceania Champions League competition.
