For his part, the coach of the “red and whites”, Jose Luis Mendiliber, in his statements to Cosmote TV, did not hide his disappointment with the final outcome of the match, but praised the performance of his players and emphasized that it is not in his philosophy to play for the tie.
In detail, the coach of Olympiakos, Jose Luis Mediliber spoke to the subscription channel:
For the match with AEK:
“Of course we are disappointed because we went there with the intention of winning and we didn’t manage to do it, but we are also satisfied with the game we played. I think we can all agree that we played very well, we were better than the opponent and had more chances.
I also think we can agree that in football you have to score. If you don’t score on your chances, what happened yesterday can happen and you leave empty handed. Also there is a difference between a loss and a draw because if you can’t win then surely a draw is better than a loss because you will get the same points as your opponent.”
-On whether it would be preferable to play more conservatively in the final so as not to lose the match:
“When something like this happens it’s logical in hindsight to think like that, but I think if we decided at that moment that we were going to go for the draw and put more people in defense then we would have risked more with the opponent gaining yards and getting closer to the area you and with one shot to cause you trouble.
I’m not that kind of coach. That’s not my philosophy. It’s not my philosophy to play for the draw and turn my team around the pitch to do something different from what we work on every day. When I play to win, I give everything to win.”
-What room for improvement does his team have:
“The results will show how much we can still improve. We visited the home of the champion and played a good game with many chances, but we dominated but did not manage to win.
We have to become more competitive and even more dangerous. What we lack both from the players and from the coaches is to become even more competitive and to believe even more in ourselves and the victory”.
-On whether he will make changes against Mars:
“It is the day after a demanding match. Some players have simply rehabilitated, some have trained, but we are still not able to know the condition of the players who played against AEK.
We have to wait for the last practice to see who is able to play and who is not. In addition, we have in mind that on Sunday we have another game and we have to take that into account”.
-For Horta’s injury:
“Tomorrow we think he will train with the team, but we have to see what condition he will be in because it is one thing to train and another to be in condition to play. We have to see his readiness.”
From the side of Fran Navarro he added: “We are really very disappointed because we showed that we can win the game, but we didn’t manage to get anything in the end. There is certainly disappointment, but there is also satisfaction because we showed that we have great potential and in the next games we will get the results we want. We have only played two games since the play offs and we have many more games to go. We have shown that we can do great things and get good results. Of course, there is room to reverse this difference.
We are returning to our headquarters and we will not change a thing. We will be aggressive and give everything to win. It is an advantage for us that we are playing in front of our audience and we will do everything to return to winning ways.”
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