Head coach Mark Jackson believes ASEAN Club Championship Shopee Cup™ title holders Buriram United FC have undergone an evolution rather than a wholesale revolution since he took over as the long-term replacement for Osmar Loss last October.
Jackson will have the perfect opportunity to showcase how his team has developed since he was appointed when he leads the Thai champions into the first leg of the last 16 AFC Champions League Elite clash with Melbourne City on Tuesday.
It was the Australian side who handed Jackson a 2-1 defeat in his debut appearance on the touchline for his new employers and the Englishman is keen to highlight the progress that has been made since losing to a late Max Caputo goal.
“When I arrived the team were in good shape, good players playing well who had had some good results and had a good start to the season. So I’d probably use the word evolve,” Jackson says of how his team has changed since his previous trip to Melbourne.
“We’ve evolved as a team, into my style of how I want my team to look. The boys have been really receptive to that since I came.
“It was really difficult in the first game to get that across. We’ve had a shift in formation but more importantly, the behaviours that we have shown on a regular basis have become more prominent.
“We’re more creative, we score more goals. We’ve seen that in our recent campaigns but we’ve also shown that we are resilient and defensively strong in the AFC Champions League Elite, particularly in the last few games with the clean sheets that we’ve had.
“It’s not a case of me improving the team. We had good players before and those are still good players but we’ve evolved how we want to play and the players have really taken that on board.”
Under Jackson, Buriram United have continued to dominate on the domestic scene, leading Thai League 1 by 11 points as well as advancing to the latter stages of both the Thai League Cup and Thai FA Cup.
Last month, they secured top spot in Group A of the Shopee Cup™ to secure a place in May’s semi-finals while victory over Melbourne City would see the club qualify for the quarter-finals of the AFC Champions League Elite for the second season in a row.
The club picked up wins over Chinese trio Shanghai Port, Chengdu Rongcheng and Shanghai Shenhua to finish fourth in the eastern league phase in the AFC Champions League Elite to earn home field advantage in the second leg of the last 16 next week.
“Any team that qualifies for the AFC Champions League Elite is a very good team and any team in the last 16 has shown they can be consistent,” Jackson says of the meeting with City. “We’ll just play the game as normal. We’ll treat it as any other game.
“We’ve had big games in ACL in recent weeks, games where we’ve had to go away to China and win and we did. So we’ll be drawing on that confidence we’ve created within the squad with those results.
“We always look at the opposition and what they can do but we have a strong focus on what we can do. We know we’ve got good players, we know we’ve got strong players and I know I’ve got a group of players now that are showing how we want to play.
“We don’t worry too much about it being the last 16, it’s just another game for us. It’s a big game that we will cope with.”
Yet again Buriram United are challenging for trophies on numerous fronts and Jackson, who led Central Coast Mariners to the AFC Cup title in 2024, is relishing the expectations that come with working at a club used to winning titles.
“It’s a good position to be in as a club because it shows you’re successful,” he says of the club’s hectic schedule. “This club is used to being successful. We welcome that. Behind the scenes, the staff, the logistics team are exceptional in what they do for the players.
“The organisation of the travel, how they coordinate that, how they make everything as easy as they can for the players is top, top level. I’ve seen that first hand. That really helps.
“And then we’ve got a team of staff around the players who understand how to physically prepare the players. And then it’s for me to manage the squad. We have a lot of players in the squad who want to play. But it’s about the team, it’s not about any individual.
“If you combine that all together I think you can be successful on multiple fronts and that’s what we aim to do. We know it’s difficult but if you get that all in place, it helps us immensely.”
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