The Villarreal manager hails his team’s capability to suffer before delivering the knockout punch
Villarreal manager Javi Calleja underlined how his team left everything on the pitch against Levante after the important victory at the Ciutat de València. “It was a tough game against a good Levante side. For once, we had luck that we haven’t had in other games. We knew how to hold on when it wasn’t going our way and we got the reward of three points for the work we put in and the faith we had until the end,” he commented.
For Calleja, defending well was the key: “Levante played very cleverly. We knew how to defend well. This time, we got a positive result that we didn’t do on other occasions. All I’m thinking about is the victory. We needed to win. These three points take us out of the relegation zone for the moment. Football is about goals and it’s true that we were more effective in front of goal than Levante.”
This win takes Villarreal out out of the bottom three. “It’s a massive high. Mentally, it helps us a lot. We had been in the relegation zone without getting out of there for a while. We now depend on ourselves to stay out. We’re aware that there are a lot of games left. We had been in the bottom three for a long time. To see us out of there is a real positive push mentally. We will still suffer because there’s a lot of the season left. We need to carry on working to minimise errors,” he underlined.
To conclude, Calleja spoke about the disallowed Levante goal which was ruled out by VAR due to a supposed offside by José Luis Morales: “The disallowed Levante goal went against them. When VAR disallows a goal for you like that it affects you because we’re only human. We got better and we kicked on. It helped our morale. I’ve seen it since, and it’s offside by a toe.”
