Statements after the victory of Olympiakos over Ferentsvaros in “Georgios Karaiskakis”, the coach of the “red and white” made Jose Luis Mendilibarstressing that he expects to see even more improvement from his players, and talking about using the 4-4-2.
In detail what the coach of Olympiakos said:
On whether he saw the aggression he wanted: “A little, not a lot. I think we had a relatively better position and confidence, we corrected some things for sure but not to the absolute extent. We need time, but we don’t have time”
On how different the rematch will be: “We will try to enter the first half much better because tonight we struggled quite a bit, we are also a little dependent on what the opponent will do inside their stadium. We will try within a week to work on some things and for the team to understand some new concepts that we want to pass. We will definitely try to improve, which we didn’t do tonight despite the fact that the result was good.”.
For the eleven that chose the derby with PAOK: “In no way was I thinking about my second game. This was my first game here and I wanted to win and so to achieve that you pick the players you think are the best so they can get the result you want.
In general, you know the team you are taking over, but you never know a player until you have a first training session with him. I used the few days I had here to see which players are in the best condition without thinking about the next game.”.
On whether the second-half changes were the key: “Not only the changes, but in general we changed the game a little bit. We saw that Ferencvaros was tired from the effort they made in the first half. We had the ability to keep the ball more, to create more danger.
We saw the nice energy of Karmos but it was pushed away by the goalkeeper and from there we saw that we have the energy to continue. We had improved in the second half and we saw that the opposition were tired and we tried to take advantage of that. That was the difference, not the changes we made but the change we made in our game and became a bit more aggressive.”.
On whether he’s considering using 4-4-2 next: “Even though there were two strikers on the pitch it wasn’t our idea to play like that, it was for Jovetic to come in to help in the center and give more power to our striker and open up the game more and our striker can score. It may have appeared that we were in 4-4-2, but our idea was for the second striker to come in and help in the center and we continued with 4-2-3-1.”.
On how he managed to free Fortunis: “90 minutes is enough time and within that time a game is not played the same from start to finish but is divided into several games. Many times you think you know what to do and you try to do it and it seems to succeed but other times no matter what you do you don’t achieve what you want.
I mean, initially Ferentsvaros had the energy to do that, but as she got tired she stopped tagging Fortunis and had more freedom. Fortounis is a player with quality and plays intelligently, so he knew he had to wait for his opportunity and when Ferentsvaros gave him more freedom, he took advantage of it.”.
On how much the presence of the people helped: “Of course, the difference is clearly visible, especially in the players. I am a coach who concentrates a lot during the game and I want to talk to my players all the time, but when no one is listening I understand that the noise is loud and that is good for the players. In the first half we didn’t start well, but the players didn’t fall psychologically from it and with the help of the crowd they played well afterwards and we succeeded”.
Source: Sport Fm
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