Lucescu: “They are young kids who have to face it & overcome it, that’s how they will mature”

After the match spoke of “easy mistakes” and, at the press conference, Razvan Lucescu stood on them again.

At the press conference that followed defeat of PAOK by Olympiakos, the Romanian coach commented on Koulierakis’ mistake in Piraeus’ second goal, explaining that “they are young guys who have to face it and overcome it. That’s how they will mature.”

What he said in detail:

On what went wrong in the second half and the defeat came: “The lack of experience to manage at such times. We made incredible mistakes that cost us the points, like with AEK. We are in a process of fighting our battles and becoming better for the new year. To create the group that will be ready for the new year. When you come here there are two main things, don’t give the ball easily to Olympiacos, have patience and also when Olympiacos doesn’t have the ball they get irritated. The second is not to make easy mistakes and lose balls. Olympiacos has great quality and speed and can easily create scoring chances and finish them very well.

In the first half, especially after the fifth minute, we started making easy mistakes in defense, especially in the lateral areas. We gave the opportunity to Olympiakos to come to our area. We scored and then had no problem managing. Olympiacos tried to bring balls forward. Bakabu made good attacks in empty space. In the second half, I don’t think Olympiacos did anything special. We made the mistake in the goal that caught us off guard at 1-1. Then in the second goal this happens. It’s young guys who have to deal with it and overcome it. This is how they will ripen. They are quality kids who mean a lot to PAOK and will represent a lot for PAOK in the coming years.”

On what helped Olympiakos in the second half: “I think the mistakes that were made in general. If we evaluated the phase of the first goal better. Olympiacos have players with the quality to reach this fantastic finish. In these games one mistake means a goal. Olympiacos didn’t make the mistakes we did.”

For the changes: “Those 8-9 minutes when the changes were in was a short time. The logic was to have fresh players to keep the ball. It was this mistake that can happen to young children. They will happen. They will happen again. They will make more mistakes until they reach the top of their career. We wanted to have experienced and fresh players for the second goal or to get a draw. If I remember correctly, El Kaduri’s phase was at 1-1”.

For being out of contention for the title: “That’s the pressure you want to put on us. We never said about such a goal. We have said that we are in a period of transition. We have enough young guys who are going to make mistakes. We managed to get good results and good games but at the critical point of pressure and in the most important ones we collapsed and made mistakes. The match against AEK is like a copy of today’s. The goal is Sunday’s match (vs. Volos in Toumba). We are disappointed but I told the guys to keep our heads up and react. Let’s win the next match. We have great challenges ahead of us.”