Strong and clear words from him Jose Luis Mendilibar in the press conference before his historic first semi-final Olympiakou with the Aston Villa in Birmingham for the Europa Conference League.
The experienced technician emphasized that it has not even crossed his mind to change his philosophy because he is facing a Premier League team, saying that if he did that then he would be remiss.
At the same time, Mr Mendiliber repeated many times that he wants Olympic to leave “Villa Park” victorious, while when he was asked about the… confrontation with him Unai Emery and the European trophies of the Villa coach, the coach of Piraeus replied that his own conquest is more recent since it came last year!
On how they prepared for Olympiakos’ historic match against Aston Villa: “We prepared the same as in any other game. It is a very important game for us and we will give it the importance it deserves. We will not change anything in our preparation and we are ready to win it.”
If there is a good result in the first match and what is it: “Of course a positive result is the best to start with, but a win or a draw can be considered a good result, depending of course on how the match goes. The qualification is judged in 180 minutes, but you can’t think about the 180 minutes from now, but the first match initially. Depending on how it goes, the result will be decided and in any case our goal is to win.”
If he has settled on his eleven and what will be the most important element and point of the match: “If I knew where the match would be decided, we would definitely have a very big advantage. I don’t know what will happen, but I know we are properly prepared. I have completed my thoughts and plans, I have decided what I will do, even what I will change if something comes up in training. We must have the calmness we had in the previous games, we are playing against a very big Premier League team but we must not have this fear and that it is very difficult to beat them or that we are inferior. If we make this mistake we won’t achieve many things, we came here with all respect but also to win.”
On the clash with Unai Emery and the fact that Aston Villa are unbeaten at home in Europe this year: “The opposing coach has 4 Europeans, I have 1. For me, my title is more recent, I really like Europe and I’m stuck with it. I really like playing in Europe, it’s something special. Whoever the coach is, though, the players are the ones playing, it’s eleven against eleven, we’re here to help them and guide them. The real value comes from those who play on the field.”
On how they will manage as a team to stop Ollie Watkins who has 26 goals this year: “He is a very good player, but he does not play alone, there are ten other good players. We don’t think about how to stop a game, but the whole team. We know their strengths and we will face them as a team.”
On not changing his attacking philosophy and if he thinks about changing his approach against the best team he will face this year: “We have played against other very good opponents, certainly Aston Villa are a strong team. If we change our approach because we are playing a Premier League team then we would become resilient and surely the opposition would take advantage of that and be better. So, no, we will not change our style, we will be ourselves.”
Source: Sport Fm
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