Unai Emery underlined that Villarreal will try and get a win against GNK Dinamo Zagreb to reach the semi-finals
Villarreal head coach Unai Emery appeared remotely in front of the media to analyse the upcoming game against GNK Dinamo Zagreb, corresponding to the second leg of the UEFA Europa League quarter-finals at the Estadio de la Cerámica (Thursday, 9pm CEST).
The Yellows manager underlined that his team will go onto the pitch with respect, but also full of motivation: “We want to put in as good a performance as we did in the first leg. We don’t want them to surprise us. For us, the Europa League is a very important competition that we have a lot of respect for. Because of that, we want to be at our best to reach the semi-finals.”
Despite winning in the first leg, Emery does not want to speculate with the result, and hopes his team will get another win to seal their place in the next round: “In the first leg, we got a positive result, but it is an insufficient result against a team that has a lot of talent in their armour. We respect our opponent a lot. We will try and continue on the same path as the first leg, improve on certain aspects and get a result which will try and increase our lead that we already have, to be able to reach the semi-finals.”
It will not be easy. As the Yellows head coach says, Dinamo Zagreb are a team with talent, experience and a competitive nature. “They’re a team that have hardly lost in this competition. They have quick players, with international experience, and a number of youngsters with a lot of quality. They are a quick team with the ball and they can play in a number of different styles easily. We have to try and limit their strengths. To do that, we need to be strong from set pieces, stop them from countering and keep tight lines to stop them from getting to our goal.”
