Leeds United goalkeeper Kiko Casilla has given his first interview since being found guilty of racial abusing another player.
The Spanish stopper received an eight-game ban and was fined £60,000 for the incident involving Charlton's Jonathan Leko last September.
He has sat out the Whites' last two games but it could be some time before he plays for the club again, owing to the suspension of matches due to the coronavirus outbreak.
Leeds are top of the Championship with nine games of the regular season left.
Now, speaking to Spanish media outlet Onda Regional de Murcia, Casilla says the Leeds squad must treat the return to action as a "mini-season".
And that when it is safe to do so, they are relishing the task of finishing the job and achieving promotion.
“The truth is that before all this happened, we had nine games left of the season and were leaders in the league,” he said.
"We’d managed five straight wins, so we were giving ourselves a good chance of promotion.
“Now we have to wait to see if we are finishing the season, but if we are, we have to return and treat the nine remaining games like a mini-season.
“We don’t know if that will be 100 per cent possible but if we can then we have to try to secure promotion because that was the objective. This team has everything to achieve it."
Meanwhile, Casilla has criticised the way the coronavirus outbreak has been handled by the UK Government and has used the situation in his homeland as an example.
He added: “We watched the news and saw Boris (Johnson) is on TV talking about everything is fine, you have to pass the virus on, not follow Spain, Italy and China.
“It was a bit surreal what he was saying on the TV when you see what’s happening in Spain and other countries.
“But the truth is that he’s gone back a bit because he was advised that it wasn’t the best thing for the country. I think that better measures (self-isolation) have been taken now.”
