Dabrauskas: “We need patience to get into the top six – We need to build a strong mentality”

About OFI’s victory over Atromitos last Saturday (29/4), but also about the club’s goals for the next season, spoke Valdas Dabrauskas.

The coach of the Heraklion team analyzed how the Cretans must build a strong mentality, while he emphasized that patience is needed in order to be in the top six of the Greek league.

His statements in detail:

For the away record: “Doesn’t it say something that we broke so many records in such a bad year? This means that OFI was below its own standards for a long time. It was a challenging year where we were fighting to avoid relegation and the next we were doing better and improving. This shows that our ambitions to get where we want to be must have patience. We will have to improve our performance to see where we can go. To build as much as we can, how to score more goals at home, how to score more victories, to move forward step by step. It’s progress. Even if you win first and take the championship, you set the next goal. We dream of winning the league, people always want the best for the team, but how many times has the team made the play offs in the last 10 years?”



For the victory with Atromitos and the couple Dico-Felipe: “We tried the Dico-Felipe duo for the first time. Everyone spoke highly of Dico but Felipe did a great job, he took on the defenders and freed up space for Dico and he did a great job.”

For the match with Ionikos and the winter friendly: “They are different games, it is different from the friendly and the 7-0. After it was over I came and told you that this and that didn’t go well. Every game is different, I can’t help but say that we weren’t good offensively against Atromitos but we also played good games against Agrinio or Lamia. Now we saw two teams that were more relaxed, especially in the first half where the ball was going up and down, we could score, they could score too. In the first goal we scored with a very nice counterattack, in the second with a gift where they usually don’t happen in more important games. These mistakes happen. But in the first half we had excellent combinations where two wrong passes by Bakic resulted, in the second we still had excellent opportunities.

Goals are goals, we have to work to improve in the details and not make those mistakes and Bakic was very upset. We have to win every game. We have to think how we will win it, how we will be better, how the people will leave the stadium happy and the general idea is that we will present ourselves better than the previous one. For me it’s just another game for OFI. Only two games left, we are focused on Saturday’s. If you didn’t come to see the training sessions, you wouldn’t believe that I was saying that there is seriousness. We want to win the next games and that is our goal.”



To enter the play-offs: “The creation of a strong mentality is not built in the big games with Olympiakos, AEK, Panathinaikos. You get three points if you beat Olympiakos, three with Lamia or Levadeakos. You don’t get into the play offs if you don’t beat teams like Lamia and Levadeakos. This is what we keep saying in the locker room too, that you have to win these games and be serious. When you play in Karaiskakis, you are always motivated to play well. You have to have the same strong motivation against such opponents in order to progress and go high.”