Bhubaneswar, Jun 29 (IANS): Odisha FC on Monday announced the signing of goalkeeper Ravi Kumar ahead of the seventh season of the Indian Super League (ISL).
The Uttar Pradesh-born custodian signed a two-year deal with the Bhubaneswar-based club on Monday.
After playing for Indian Arrows and Sporting Clube de Goa, Ravi Kumar was selected for Delhi Dynamos in the second season of the ISL.
He has played in the league for NorthEast United and Mumbai City FC in 2017-18 and 2018-19 seasons respectively.
The 26-year-old goalie had also represented I-League side Minerva Punjab FC earlier in his career.
Welcoming the goalkeeper, club President Rohan Sharma said: "I am happy to have Ravi join our squad. He is a goalkeeper with a lot of experience and can give good competition to Arsh and Kamaljit."
A delighted Ravi Kumar said: "I am excited to be joining Odisha FC and I hope I can help the club compete for titles & trophies and hopefully play in AFC very soon. Looking forward to joining Ama Team."
Recently, Odisha FC head coach Stuart Baxter said former South Africa skipper Faf du Plessis has advised him to be on the 'front foot' all the time as the latter aims for a playoffs finish in his first season in the ISL.
The former South Africa football team coach will be at the helm of the Bhubaneswar-based franchise in the upcoming season.
"The people I have spoken to say that the Indian players are ambitious. I had an interesting conversation with Faf du Plessis. He said that the Indian cricketers (sportsmen) are fantastic when on the front foot when they go on the back foot, they have too much to do. If they don't do that they will be totally unplayable," Baxter said during a virtual interaction with Odisha FC head of football operations Abhik Chatterjee.
"So, my job, I believe, is to make sure that my Odisha players feel like mentally on the front foot in any case and I think all of those things will go together into a style. We will bring in together the works that have been done until now and new stuff that we wanna do and describe it in a way that the players feel 'Yeah! Let's go on the front foot'."