Takianos: “The difficulties we go through make every victory greater”

Fotis Takianos congratulated his players for the victory against Benfica, he spoke about the problems of Fridriksson and Margaritis on Tuesday, he is waiting for the next two matches to qualify for the “16”, he spoke about the missed rebounds and the double-digit errors, but also the heart that the “black and white” showed in the last three minutes and asked them to concentrate on the match against Kolossos, while he called the fact that they are first in the group a success.

Analytically: “Congratulations to the players for the win. We are happy for the win, but we played without our captain, who had an injury, while Fridriksson spent the night before in hospital. The team has been struggling for a long time and that makes our victory tonight even more important. It’s a win that allows us to stay at the top of the group. We still have two games left. Nothing is certain yet about our qualification.

It’s a big win. In the first half, the big problem we had was defensive rebounding and we made a lot of mistakes. That didn’t allow us to control the pace, which we did in the second half. In the last 3′ we were the team whose decisions on both sides were good. We gave our hearts out, we got a great victory that PAOK deserved”.

Speaking about Fridriksson’s condition and whether he can now think about the next step in the event, he noted: “Fridriksson felt unwell yesterday with his stomach, left for the hospital and stayed there until dawn on serum. We hope he recovers. There are other players injured and playing. Misfortune has struck us many times. We lost McNeese who hit a teammate, Beliauskas who stepped on the referee… These are big misfortunes and I emphasize this because we are competitive. We show up the way we should.

Planning on whether we will be able to qualify cannot be done now. Tomorrow’s game of Galatasaray against Hapoel is very crucial to see mainly what Galata will do. We will prepare, to go to the next game, we will wait for the results because we also depend on others. Step by step, we opened a path because no one expected that after four races we would be first. We all made it together, the road was not open…

Many teams, more or less, have a better way, big budget, ‘deep’ roster, changes whenever they want, removals… We pave the way with our effort, with our daily dedication of soul and at the moment we are very proud of what we have achieved”.