The Villarreal manager was proud of the work his team put in
The Villarreal CF manager, Marcelino García Toral, was really proud of the work his players put in tonight against Liverpool, in a game that the Yellows came out on top in: “We were presented with the chance to create history. We were up against a team with an extraordinary historic record and all of us have been thinking about this game. It has been an unforgettable night. We’re fortunate to have been able to live a night that every professional dreams of”.
The manager praised the whole team for their performance: “We were effective against a team with great players. We scored after having already created many chances on goal. We are the deserved winners”.
In addition, Marcelino expressed his surprise at his opponents non-attacking style. “They came here and played carefully. Both at the start of the game and after the break, they defended and wanted to keep it as a 0-0 draw. Liverpool came here with a lot of respect for us and this is praise for the good job our players have done in this competition”.
With regard to the second leg at Anfield on 5th May (9:05pm CET), Marcelino added that he hopes his team play like they did tonight: “I don’t think we’ll play much different than today. We will have to defend very well and attack with purpose because they’re going to press us high. They will have to not have their best day but we will have to break down their attack, which today I think we succeeded in doing”.
To finish, Marcelino thanked the fans for their tremendous support tonight and wanted to send them a message ahead of the second leg: “The fans enjoyed tonight of course and they were key in making it happen. We’ll see if within eight days we’ll have an even greater reason to celebrate. The fans know we’re going to fight for it. The atmosphere today reminded me of what we went through only three years ago, when we were playing for promotion to the First Division in the last match against Almería. If we had been told then that we would be living what we did today we wouldn’t have believed it”.
