Olof Mellberg
“I think it was discipline. We didn’t start well at all. We had a lack of discipline in defense, a lack of organization and you can’t afford that in any game, to lose that concentration and not work well defensively. Teams will punish us and we saw that today. That was the biggest change we made in the second half.
The first half was disappointing, especially the first half hour or so. It wasn’t good enough for us. Obviously when you come back from 2-0 and you score a few goals you get a lot of confidence and you move forward more and it helps but overall it wasn’t a great game for us looking at the first have bit it was indeed a fantastic second half and it was enough.
Well in Crete we have to be better than today; start better for sure. We can’t lose that discipline, not in the Cup, not in the League. We have to be focused and disciplined for 90 minutes. In a way it was a good wakeup call today to know that when we lack that little bit of discipline, we get punished. If we are well organized and work hard for each other we are very difficult to beat we must look at that in bring into the Cup game. Today everyone tried to score goals and we didn’t run back, basically it’s as simple as that. When we do that it works very good for us but when we don’t, our opponents punish us. That’s what happened with Asteras and with Metalist.
I don’t think that anyone believes that we don’t deserve to win the League. Overall we played well the whole season; we had that discipline, scored a lot of goals and conceded very few so I think we had everything this season to win the competition.
The fans were fantastic. They’ve been fantastic the whole season. Ever since I came to Olympiacos they’ve been great. We’ve had our ups and downs but they’ve always supported us and backed us, so they’re fantastic supporters. In different ways, I’ve had this support before; good supporting in the club’s I’ve been to before but Olympiacos fans are special. We see that there are travelling fans wherever we go and Olympiacos fans are everywhere in Greece so I think that they’re a big part of our success.”
Kevin Mirallas
“I had said from the beginning that my personal goal was to win the title of the season’s top scorer in the Superleague. The important thing always is that the victory of the team. All the goals I have scored are with the help of to my teammates and for that I thank them.
These two years I’ve been with Olympiacos have been the best in my career. I won the championship title last year and I believe we will win the second one this season and hopefully the Cup also. For the years that I will be on the team I want to take pleasure in the game, help my team achieve its goals and hope to give joy to the fans who watch us.
It is true that we are not used to losing by 2-0 at home at 20 minutes but we didn’t panic, played as we had to and won the game in the end.
I don’t remember ever having scored four goals in one match. If I have done so it must have been either in training or in my back yard! I would like to thank my teammates for without them I would have never scored 18 goals.”
Djamel Abdoun
“I am happy with today’s game because we showed we have character and because we played really good football in the second half. We are proud that we made our families, our fans and ourselves happy tonight.
I am happy for Mirallas and Djebbour especially for Rafik because after the game against Metalist some people criticized him a lot but I knew that all great players make their comebacks and we must never forget that he has helped us out a great deal throughout the season.
Our fans have always backed us. We have an amazing public and we must admit that there are not many fans like that in football. We are very proud to have such a crowd. I hope that we will have a great feast with them when we win the title, because we will win it.”
Jean II Makoun
“The first minutes where difficult for us as we conceded two goals that I think were a little bit our fault. We knew that this team could put us into trouble due to their counterattacks. We lacked a little bit of balance and we didn’t follow the advices that our coach gave us before the game. Luckily we won that penalty which helped us come back into the game and although we lacked accuracy in the game and in our passes in the first half, we still pressured a lot.
It’s true that we are not very happy with our performance in the first half because as I said we lacked accuracy and we lost many balls but the coach urged us at halftime and we also urged ourselves and so I think that in the second half we showed the true “face” of Olympiacos.
I think we must also congratulate the “12th man”, the fans, who also help us and we also saw that today, while we were losing by 2-0 they supported us and helped us put more pressure and I think that if we show the “face” that we showed in the second half, more often, then I think that we can cause serious trouble to any team when we play at home.”
