Mendiliber: “My philosophy is not to play for a draw – We have to become even more competitive”

Despite his very good appearance and the many opportunities he missed, o Olympic was defeated with a score of 1-0 by AEK in the “OPAP Arena” thanks to his goal Eliasson in overtime, and stayed -8 off the top.

In the wake of this match and a few 24 hours before the match with Mars (03/04) for the third game of the playoffs, the Basque coach commented on COSMOTE TV the performance with Join and the fact that he didn’t just want a draw, while he commented on whether he will rotate with Aris but also on his condition Andre Horta.

In detail what he said:

For the match with AEK: “Of course we are disappointed because we went there with the intention of winning and we didn’t, but we are also satisfied with the game we played. I think we can all agree that we played very well, we were better than the opponent and had more chances. I also think we can agree that in football you have to score. If you don’t score on your chances, what happened yesterday can happen and you leave empty handed. Also there is a difference between a loss and a draw because if you can’t win then surely a draw is better than a loss because you will get the same points as your opponent.”

On whether it would be better for him to play more conservatively in the final so as not to lose the match: “When something like this happens it’s logical in hindsight to think like that, but I think if we decided at that moment that we were going to go for the draw and put more people in defense then we would have risked more with the opponent gaining yards and getting closer to the area you and with one shot to cause you trouble. I’m not that kind of coach. That’s not my philosophy. It’s not my philosophy to play for the draw and turn my team around the pitch to do something different from what we work on every day. When I play to win, I give everything to win.”

On what room for improvement his team has: “The results will show how much we can still improve. We visited the home of the champion and played a good game with many chances, but we dominated but did not manage to win. We have to become more competitive and even more dangerous. What we lack both from the players and from the coaches is to become even more competitive and to believe even more in ourselves and the victory.”

On whether he will make changes against Mars: “It is the day after a demanding match. Some players have simply rehabilitated, some have trained, but we are still not able to know the condition of the players who played against AEK. We have to wait for the last practice to see who is able to play and who is not. In addition, we have in mind that on Sunday we have another game and we have to take that into account”.

For Horta: “Tomorrow we think he will train with the team, but we have to see what condition he will be in because it is one thing to train and another to be in condition to play. We have to see his readiness.”