Melbourne City FC Head Coach John van’t Schip spoke with the media for the first time on Friday following the signing of its Australian marquee Josh Kennedy.
Kennedy — who joins the Club in January — will be an important acquisition for the side and van’t Schip is looking forward to the arrival of the 33-time Socceroo.
“We’ve worked on it for a few weeks and we’re happy we’ve signed Josh up,” van’t Schip said.
“We know his qualities, he’s a strong player up front, he can hold the ball up, he’s good with his head and his aerial abilities are very good.”
Kennedy will join Melbourne City FC from Nagoya Grampus, who play in the Japanese J-League, and van’t Schip says the Victorian will fulfil his contract there until the end of 2014.
“He’s still in Japan, he needs to finish his contract over there,” van’t Schip said.
“He will then come over and we will have to have a program for him for when we start in January.
“We knew that it was difficult [to get him out of his contract] and we knew that the only option was [to have him] from January.”
Asked about Kennedy’s fitness heading into the second half of the Hyundai A-League season, van’t Schip was adamant that the Club could get Kennedy to a level where he would be firing January.
“We will work hard to get him fit and he will work hard to get fit. He’s very ambitious to play in the A-League so we will all work to make it happen,” van’t Schip said.
“He’s had a good medical, there are no issues with him but the main thing is that he will have to have a good lead up in the part he comes back.”
