Marcelino highlighted that Villarreal had “a great game” against Bayer 04 Leverkusen
The Villarreal CF manager, Marcelino García Toral, was very proud of the work that his players put in to get the win against Bayer 04 Leverkusen in the first leg of the UEFA Europa League Round of 16 tonight (2-0). Despite the two goal difference however, Marcelino prefers not to count their stars yet: “It’s a great result. To score a goal early on put us on the right track. But this tie is by no means settled, but we are the favourites now. We’re happy, but the knockout phase isn’t over yet”.
Marcelino believes his side were deserving of the victory against the German side: “We always analyse the next opponent and try to come up with a game plan to win. We also did this against Las Palmas, but we lost. This is football and sometimes footballers are lucky. This time it didn’t work well.
With regard to Bakambu’s performance, double goal scorer tonight, Marcelino stressed how important this was: “It’s always important for strikers to be scoring goals and today he scored two, the second of which was spectacular, benefiting him and the team.
Villarreal came away with another clean sheet thanks to a great team effort: “All players are working hard and concentration was maximum throughout. It’s difficult to score on us and even harder to create chances against us. A powerful team like Leverkusen didn’t have any clear chances tonight and this is credit to all the team”.
