Olympiacos coach José Luis Mendilibar, in his post-match press conference following the game against Panetolikos, emphasized that his team needs to improve its speed in play. The experienced coach spoke about the tight defense of the Agrinio-based team, a tactic that Olympiacos must counter by playing faster.
Words from the Basque coach in detail:
What was missing from Olympiacos that prevented them from winning?
We showed that we had the desire to fight and win the match, but we lacked the speed to move the ball around better, to react quicker, and to deliver faster crosses. We made many crosses that weren’t successful. Congratulations to the opponent for their solid defensive play—they never allowed us to play one-on-one, and that made things difficult for us. We definitely need to be faster if we want to win against such teams.
Most teams in the league will use this tactic at Karaiskakis Stadium. How much of a concern was it that your team struggled against such an opponent, and how did the league break affect your performance?
The break didn’t affect us. We know there will be more such breaks during the season, and we can’t complain about that. We will face other teams that play this way at our stadium, but I don’t think they will have the same confidence in their defense as Panetolikos did today. We also didn’t allow the opponent to threaten us because when you play against such teams, their counterattacks can be dangerous, and we didn’t let that happen. However, our attacks weren’t successful, and we need to improve that. I don’t think that all the teams that come to Karaiskakis will have such a successful defensive performance.
Why do you think the team resorted to crosses and not vertical play from a certain point in the game?
First of all, we need to analyze the way the opponent played. They played so tightly in their box that they gave us no chance to play behind them. There were players like Gelson who tried to do that, as well as Velde and Willian, but none of them managed to get behind the defense. There was no space in Panetolikos’ defense. To deal with that, we need to be faster—speed is the only way to counter such tactics.
