Olympiacos downed Panathinaikos by 1-0 at G. Karaiskakis Stadium for MD9 of the Stoiximan Super League Playoffs.
During his post-match Press Conference, the red-and-white coach Jose Anigo expressed his satisfaction at his team’s win.
Words by the French coach in detail during his press conference:
Do you believe that the players of Olympiacos haven’t done justice to themselves this season?
In football, things are not always balanced; this has been a long season, with lots of ups and downs and, when talking about injustice, our team has been robbed in several cases and penalty calls. I do not know if we did injustice to ourselves as professionals. There have been some ugly evenings, but we always try to play as professionals. There are many things that happen throughout a season and spoil the balance, but we always try to respond to them with professionalism.
You could have piled up the pressure to Panathinaikos, a worn-out side, from the opening minutes and we also saw you going for a second goal by using Ramon as a winger.
The reply is simple in both questions. When we play against Panathinaikos, then we play to win; we knew they would fall back and wait for us and we should avail ourselves of all potential gaps. That’s how we played to make use of the spaces left by the opponent. Also, our players are equally tired, all footballers play in the same number of matches and they are run down the same. What matters is to try and beat the opponents off, we tried to break into space and put pressure on them. We wanted to exploit Ramon’s fast runs and help Oleg who struggled a lot and got tired in the match.
With you being at the helm, we watched two different formations, one that was quite offensive-minded and one with three midfielders. Judging by the results, do you believe that the second one is what suits this team?
In football, it’s all about winning; it doesn’t matter what formation will help you do that and get the result. It is also important to claim a good result keeping a clean sheet against Panathinaikos as it was the case with AEK. We haven’t beaten Panathinaikos since May 2021, so what matters is the result, not the formation.
Mr. Jovanović said that this result was due to the fact that no time was given to his players to recover from COVID. Your comment on this?
Let me tell you what I stand for: no team is unweary at the end of the Playoffs; this applies to all sides because the schedule has been heavy. The same applies to ΑΕΚ, to Panathinaikos, to Olympiacos and PAOK, and all players have problems to face. I do not like commenting on what other coaches say; what matters is that Olympiacos won the derby and the rest is history. What stays is that Olympiacos won the match.
