Mateo: “We have to improve that we didn’t do it right, we lost fairly”

Chus Mateo stressed that the Real players always go for the win and that’s what they tried to do against Panathinaikos, he spoke about how much the suspension of the Euroleague against the “greens” affected his team competitively, he described Panathinaikos’ victory as fair and that I ran out of energy in the overthrow attempt and asked them to go match by match afterwards and forget about this one.

Analytically: “We will continue to work and try to improve the things we weren’t good at today. It is important to think that the children continue to try hard to always pursue victory, as we tried today and did not succeed.

That the first home defeat comes just hours into March says a lot about how the team is doing so far in the EuroLeague. Today the loss hurts, but we are coming off two different weeks due to the layoff. I was afraid we might be a bit scattered, there’s been a lot of emotion in the last few weeks and I think we’ve noticed that.

A loss doesn’t have to affect us too much. They played better than us and deserved to win. We started the match well, quite focused. However, we had a bad moment when we started losing balls all the time and that helped Panathinaikos to believe it. It was a game where energy was important, when we got it we came back, but then they played really well. Although we lost and did not play well, we must congratulate the opponent, because he played well.

We have to keep going game by game with composure, without going crazy, doing our job well. If we had been told this in September, that on February 29 we would lose our first home game in the Euroleague and only have five defeats, we would have signed it. But, we are ambitious, we are not satisfied and today we are sad that we lost. They played a good game, we didn’t live up to expectations and we have to turn the page quickly.”