Medilibar: “If Kostoulas had started and played like this we wouldn’t have suffered – The fault is the coach’s…”

THE Jose Luis Mendilibar spoke at the press conference about how he arrived Olympic in victory over Marsbut also for the difficulty faced by the “red and whites” against teams that play defensively.

The Basque technician certainly stood by the contribution of Babis Kostoulas and answered the question if it was a mistake that he did not start.

What he said in detail

How much older do you feel after this fight and also are wins like this what give championships?

“Older yes I might feel. It was a really important match to win because it’s more than three points. It was a match that it looked like we couldn’t win, but we fought until the end, we won it and that gave us a lot of confidence».

Should Olympiacos learn to live with their predictable play? Does Kostoulas have the elements that will solve the championship?

“Some games are really difficult to win because the teams come to Karaiskakis to play close and when they are ahead it is difficult for us. It is rare that we have won easily against defensive teams. But fortunately, the solution came from the bench with Mouzakitis, Kostoula, they gave us better football. Kostoulas didn’t just give us the goals, he created and led us to the match. He also had accuracy, something that we lacked in general, because we saw that in the first half we had chances with El Kaabi and Zelson, but they were not accurate».

Whose signature is tonight’s match, yours to put on a player who scored two goals or the footballer’s?

“The coach’s fault for not putting him in from the start. Because if he had come in from the first moment and played the way he did in the second half, we wouldn’t have suffered. What the coach hopes for when he makes the changes is the one who comes off the bench to help and in this particular case Kostoulas helped a lot».

Towards the end of the match we saw that you played without a ‘pure’ winger, is that something you’ve worked on or did it come out in the game?

“We asked Kostoula to get a little further to the left of the pitch so he could win the ball and shoot and he was able to do that. When we say that someone plays as a winger is his original position, but football is the movement, we have tried it with other footballers, Cicinho, Rodney who has many times offered from there. The player may start from a specific spot, but during the match he may search for the appropriate spot to be able to shoot. This is what we asked of Kostoulas, to enter the game and look for the right spot to shoot and score».