Calvin Bassey was ‘buzzing’ after scoring the winner on his home debut as Fulham rounded off their pre-season preparations with an encouraging win over Hoffenheim at Craven Cottage this afternoon.
The powerful defender capped a composed display at centre back with an emphatic near post header from Andreas Pereira’s corner to give Marco Silva’s side a morale-boosting win ahead of their Premier League opener against Everton at Goodison Park next week. Bassey, a £15m summer signing from Ajax, played down the importance of his goal in a post-match interview with FFCTV:
“The most important thing was the team winning of course. We got the win and we have a good feeling going into the start of the season. As I said in my first interview, I’m confident. I want to play nice, attacking football. It’s not always going to go perfect but today it worked for us – so we’re just building on it.”
He was also rather modest about the dominant header that earned Fulham victory in front of the Hammersmith End, which looked like the result of a rehearsed set play.
“I’ve got a good leap. I just darted for the front post! We’ve done set pieces. we’ve worked on them a lot. The manager asked where I feel comfortable and I told him I liked going across the front and using my pace to beat players. It was a beautiful ball from Andreas and I didn’t really have much to do – I just tried to direct it, keep it on target. I attacked it and just saw it go in!”
The former Rangers central defender felt the Whites gave a good account of themselves and showed real character to respond after Hoffenheim had quickly cancelled out Raul Jimenez’s opening goal.
“It was a good game. I think it was a balanced game at times. They’ve got a good side. You can see from the first half it was going to be decided by the fine moments and which team could get the first goal. The first goal’s always important. We just came out on top. The boys did really well to score, create those chances and I think we had a couple more as well near the end of the game. We’ve just to work on our fine details so we can score three or four and take a bit of the pressure off.”
Bassey admitted he can hardly wait for the big kick off next weekend against the Toffees:
“I’m buzzing. Every kid’s dream is to play in the Premier League and that’s been my dream. Hopefully, I do enough for the manager to put me into the starting line and I’ll give all I can for team.”
