Julen Lopetegui giving instructions to his players

LOPETEGUI: "IT WAS ALL ABOUT NOT MAKING MISTAKES AND NOT CONCEDING"

02/02/2020
Lopetegui, despite everything, thought his side deserved the three points

Still upset after the result last night, Julen Lopetegui stopped the speak to the media after the draw against Alavés: "The evaluation of the match is never positive whenever you've dropped two points at home. The played with two solid banks, one of 5 and another of 4. This made things hard for us to move the ball about swiftly and it was all about not making any mistakes and not conceding. Sooner or later we knew that the patience would pay off and the goal would come. However, we conceded first and then we had to throw everything at it. We lost our patience and we got into great situations where we had opportunities, but our hastiness played into their hands. Despite all of this, and without it being a great game of football, I thought we deserved the three points".

Lopetegui saw the game first hand, but everything seemed to go wrong: "Then had more energy than us in the first half and we knew that they were going to drop off. After we made the two quick changes, I got the feeling that we would go on to win. We played in their half, but we lacked the composure to find the final pass and we ended up making mistakes. We've won a lot of games by 1-0 by not conceding; but today, football punished us and the only chance they had, they converted. We have to improve and learn from our mistakes".

The result from Thursday night was still clearly playing on everyone's mind: "We were very angry and we really wanted to turn up and make everyone happy. It's been a long and tough week and we came up against a side who were coming into the encounter fresh and who had obviously prepared well. Without it being the best football match, we deserved to win; but what wins you games are goals". Finally, he spoke about Suso's debut: "It wasn't easy for him coming into the match in that moment. He asked for it, he wanted it and he showed it. He has a good shot and an eye for a pass. Now, he has to get up to speed with the competitiveness of the team".