Gerso Fernandes: 'Incheon United never gave up trying to sign me'

In an interview with KLeague.com, Gerso Fernandes has revealed that Incheon United showed great persistance when trying to beat other team's to his signature. He also admits how impressed he has been with the club's support.

But, his initial priority, he says, was to agree new terms with Jeju United where he had spent the last two seasons:

"Well, so my first intention would if I could get an agreement with Jeju then I would stay in Korea. But if I couldn't get an agreement with Jeju my plan actually was not to come back to Korea. It was to try either Japan or the Middle East or something."

But then Incheon entered the fray, along with FC Seoul who were also interested, and manager Jo Sung-hwan even offered to visit Gerso in his home in the United States to convince him to swap Seogwipo for Sungui Arena.

"So Incheon [came] with different offers but they never give up. Even the coach said that he would come to United States to my house to talk with me, to try to convince me. And they wrote a letter, a really nice letter saying, 'Hey, we really want you. This is what we can offer you. We're trying to do our best to bring you in, and we really want you here.' But then finally we got an agreement but it took some time. They never gave up actually."

Gerso feels he made the right decision and has been particularly impressed with the Incheon fanbase.

"I knew that Incheon would have more [fans than Jeju] but I had no idea how [many] and the first away game against Seoul, I just had like this emotion, I don't know this feeling. It was a happy feeling. This scene, so many fans in an away game, a home game can only be [even] better and indeed it was better... And hopefully, we can give them more wins so they can keep coming and bring more friends and family and just bring more people to the stadium because that's part of soccer as well, right?"

Read the full interview on KLeague.com here