Cuca backs Santos after draw with Recoleta, but rues: “Ugly result” | OneFootball

Santos left Vila Belmiro with a 1-1 draw against Deportivo Recoleta in a match valid for the second round of the Copa Sudamericana. After the game, coach Cuca defended the team’s performance, which was booed. He said he understood the fans’ frustration and admitted that the result was ugly and bad for Peixe.

“The result itself is bad, but you can’t call it an embarrassment because I don’t know how many other bad results have happened. We feel it because it was a game to win comfortably. The strategy was well planned, put into practice, and well executed. We dominated the entire game, but we have to score. When we miss easy chances like we did, it becomes dangerous. Now we have to manage this bad result and this bad moment in the Sudamericana,” he said.

“I wouldn’t say the game was ugly. The result was ugly. But the whole game was total supremacy. On a normal day, when your finishing is sharp, you score four or five, with the chances we created for that. But we didn’t score here, missed easy goals, and that created enormous instability. We made the wrong choices on the final pass, and also on easy balls that they usually finish better,” he continued.

Santos opened the scoring early and created plenty of chances to at least go into halftime with the lead. However, they ended up conceding the equalizer from a penalty converted by Ortiz. The fans at Vila Belmiro booed the team at halftime and after the final whistle.

“As for the criticism and the arguments, they (the fans) are right. They want to see the team win. If we score three or four goals, with the amount of play we had, it was a well-played game. Since we didn’t score, it becomes a badly played game,” said the coach.

“That’s football. This pressure from the fans didn’t come from today’s game. If everything were fine, in a match where you take that many shots, I think 17 against an opponent, with 80% possession, the fan will understand that it was bad luck, that the ball just didn’t go in. But this has been building up. The fans have been putting up with it for a long time, and today even worse: on the club’s anniversary. We started the game well, pushed the opponent back, scored, and missed other very clear chances that you normally don’t miss with the quality we have. That creates danger, because at any moment you concede one ball and the opponent scores, as happened with the misfortune of our center back, who ended up running over one of their players on a ball that posed no danger at all,” he analyzed.

Cuca defends Neymar and Gabigol

Neymar and Gabigol were targeted by the fans after the end of the match. The No. 10 even argued with fans as he left the pitch, while Gabigol mocked the boos when he was substituted in the second half. Cuca came to the defense of both and revealed that the matter will be addressed internally.

“Arguing with the fans, leaving with a smile, that’s because they weren’t satisfied either, they wanted to win, they wanted to be applauded, they wanted to give the club an anniversary present and they couldn’t, so they leave frustrated too. Now, it only depends on them, on no one else. Only they can come back on Sunday, play a great game like they did against Galo, and beat Fluminense, it only depends on them. Now, if I come here today and open up a range of specific criticism toward one or another, I’m going to lose what I’m building, which is a team, a unit, knowing how to share the good things and the bad ones. The bad part, at this moment, is mostly mine, and internally I will demand more, as a coach has to, but internally, not out here,” he concluded.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇧🇷 here.