The Villarreal manager reflected on the missed opportunity and controversy of the Liverpool tie
The Villarreal CF manager, Marcelino García Toral, sadly reflected on his team’s result against Liverpool tonight which means they won’t be playing in the UEFA Europa League Final. “It’s obvious that what we tried to do didn’t work for us. We didn’t want to let in an early goal and we did. That first goal affected us quite a lot. Then we were playing against a team whose intensity was not always within the rules, but the referee let it happen. In the end, the Víctor Ruiz sending off finished the game for us”, he commented.
According to the manager, the referee’s performance dictated the match: “We tried to play and go forward with the ball, but they pressured us a lot. Then, when we did get forward and they fouled us and the referee didn’t make the calls it was even more difficult to compete. I don’t want to speak about the referee much. Only that after everything he saw on the pitch, to send off one of our players makes me believe that he wasn’t a fair official”.
To finish, Marcelino wanted to congratulate Liverpool: “The biggest difference in this game was the intensity. We wanted to impose ourselves, but Liverpool are a great team and are in their best moment of the season right now. We tried everything, but they were better than us in parts of the game and we congratulate them for that”.
