Vasco win in Chile and assistant explains goal conceded: “Pitch to blame” | OneFootball

“I want to congratulate our group here. We managed to turn around a difficult match. It took a little while to adapt to the pitch, but our group showed a lot of courage to play. Our group showed a lot of character to play. They are experienced, quality players.”

“We knew that first half was not what Vasco are used to doing, we were capable of playing a much better game than what we did in the first half. That is basically what I told them, that they had to play a better second half, a much better one because of the quality we have in our squad. They understood, we brought that into the second half, and then you saw what happened in the second half.”

“It was a factor that led us to concede the goal at the start of the match. I’m sure that if the pitch had been different, our start would also have been different. Our goal was to finish the game without conceding. Unfortunately, we conceded early, we had to change some behaviors and, following the plan that had been set, we managed to make the adjustments and come back. A synthetic pitch, wet, very cold, is not what we are used to playing on, but a top-level team has to adapt quickly.”

“We always prefer natural grass, I think football changes its characteristics, it moves a little away from its normal standard, and every time it moves away from that normal standard it creates an adaptation period, where teams do not have the time that teams used to synthetic pitches have to adapt, and that is an advantage. We should be working under equal conditions, and this creates an advantage. These advantages in football make a difference. What neutralizes this kind of advantage is the player’s quality — if the quality is higher, the adaptation is faster.”

“Saldivia is a player we like a lot. He is an athlete who has been earning more and more minutes in Renato’s team, a player who has our full confidence. Today he was our captain, he was one of our leaders on the pitch, he organized the team. It was fundamental for us to have players who already knew the field, knew the players we were facing. It was a team we knew had a lot of mobility, and we needed experienced players like Saldivia.”

Visualizza l' imprint del creator