Carlos Corberan in press conference duties after the end of the Olympiacos v Apollon Limassol tie. The “red-and-whites” qualified to the UEFA Europa League group stage on penalties following the return match in G. Karaiskakis.
Details of the press conference held by our team’s coach Carlos Corberan:
Those 5 matches at the bench of Olympiacos must have been like an entire football season. All’s well that ends well?
When you get prepared for the qualifiers, you know there will be challenges and you have to be ready to face them. The important thing is for the side to respond well for the club and the fans.
Has this process they have been through made Olympiacos more demanding for their course in this European competition?
I think that challenges make you stronger and help build your character; through this process, you become truly stronger. I believe our team does have this character; we were through difficulties in the first leg; we trailed back and when we came back, they leveled things. Today once again, we had some difficulties, .e.g. conceding in the 90th minute and left one man les during almost the entire overtime. All these have generated challenges we that had to be weathered. We showed we had the personality, the character and might to deal with them and, of course, our fans helped us a lot.
This is the second qualification won on penalties and with a goal conceded in the 90th minute. What should the team change ahead of the group stage ties in order to win matches?
Of course, both opponents were strong teams and we had a hard time to qualify to the group stage. What I have to say is that if we consider the opportunities we created today and in Cyprus, this shows we have been the team that deserved to qualify. The team has to be improved and deliver more in certain areas by keeping up the hard work.
Did you say anything to your players after the match? Did you speak with Vaclik?
What I tried to instill in the players was to show them I proud of them and they deserved to advance. It was hard to finish the overtime with one man less. If we were to qualify, we would have done that together.
In what positions does the team need some additions and what are we to expect as of tomorrow in terms of transfers?
Currently, I can give you no answer because we have first to run our analysis with the people in charge on what we need. I can give you no answers because we haven’t done our analysis yet. What I can say to you is that we will do what we have to do. We have some thoughts and more analysis will be made, so we are more competitive in the group stage.
