Right after the Aris tie, the red-and-whites’ coach, Michel, held his post-match press conference:
Would you apply the same tactics and substitutions if the match were to be played again? Do you think this has been a bad evening for you as well?
Firstly, let me tell you this has been a bad evening for our team although we were better in the biggest part of the match. We all made mistakes and conceded 2 goals and drew. surely, if I were to know the final scoreline and play the match all over again, I would have made some different moves. But when I had to replace Hwang because he felt discomfort, I didn’t expect to concede the first goal, not in the slightest. We know that when a bad result occurs and we start looking for the person responsible, this is always the coach. I wasn’t the person responsible for the fgirst 70 minutes, but I was indeed for the last 20.
Olympiacos lost a great chance to better its position on the table; what is currently your mental status and that of your players? Can you also fill us in about the injuries of Ba and Canos?
Canos will stay out for a while due to a knee issue; Ba feels discomfort and we hope to be available for the coming match. Of course, we hate to see their injuries being worse than expected. Hwang also felt discomfort, himself he said he could go on for another 20 minutes but we decided to replace him because he had had a 30-hour flight back from his National Team’s match and we did not want to stress him more. We are disappointed, this feeling is strong in the dressing room because we expected to reach closer to the top and these last 20 minutes erased our performance in the first 70.
Not using El Arabi was dictated by your tactics or the player’s state of fitness?
There was no reason to; we thought that since we won and Aris had many players already in attack, we could use Masouras’ speed for our own attacking efforts. However, Aris took us by surprise by means of their goal.
