Early ‘real’ football is suiting Ross County defender Alex Iacovitti
Alex Iacovitti is relishing being thrown straight back in to competitive football so early in the season.
The centre back has played 90 minutes in each of Ross County’s three Premier Sports Cup group matches so far.
After a 2–0 win away at Alloa Athletic on Tuesday night, the Staggies are on the brink of securing safe passage through to the next round of the competition.
Just having to think about progressing in a cup at this time of the year, though, is a new challenge for Iacovitti.
Starting his third season in Dingwall, the 24-year-old’s first impression of Scottish football was as it was peeking out from the initial Covid shut down, meaning friendlies were hard to come by and the League Cup did not start until October.
Last year, a well-documented outbreak of the virus at the Global Energy Stadium meant footballing operations ceased, with County essentially knocked out of the competition before they started due to forfeited matches.
Before that, playing in England, Iacovitti would only have been focusing on friendlies at this point.
While the current format of the League Cup divides opinion, then, Iacovitti is a fan of having stakes and something to play for at such an early stage in the campaign.
“It’s quite weird actually, you come back in and you’re straight into competitive games, but I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Iacovitti insisted.
“You want real football. You don’t want to be playing friendlies every five minutes, you want to go straight into it like we have done.
“It makes it very different. We’ve got an eye on the last 16, and we want to do well in the cup after we couldn’t last year because of Covid.
“We’ve got that in our minds, so we’re taking every game properly serious.
“Obviously it’s competitive, there’s no hiding away from that, so we’re really enjoying it.
“I’ve just got to keep going now and the sharpness will slowly come back. Some people are at different stages, so it has been good to see certain players get on the pitch, but it’s really good.”
Josh Sims opened the scoring at Alloa on Tuesday night with his first goal for the club, heading in Kazeem Olaigbe’s cross.
Alloa could have drawn level from the penalty spot when Jack Baldwin fouled Ross MacIver, but Jake Eastwood saved Conor Sammon’s spot kick.
County would then make it 2–0 deep into stoppage time, as Jordy Hiwula converted Dominic Samuel’s ball in – leaving County just needing a positive result against East Fife in Dingwall on Saturday to go through.