Villarreal face Real Betis this Sunday at 7:30pm CEST at La Cerámica
Villarreal head coach, Quique Setién, appeared at the press conference ahead of the first matchday of the LALIGA EA Sports, in which the Submarine will face Real Betis this Sunday at 7.30pm CEST at the Estadio de la Cerámica.
These are the comments made by Setién:
Pre-season
“Pre-seasons are for what they are for. Some people give importance to results. It’s true that winning always gives you more confidence, but it has nothing to do with the reality of LaLiga and the competition. The team has suffered losses and new players have arrived, players have come up from the B team and there have been injuries. The pre-season is about getting in shape, seeing things and remembering important things that we need to improve. For me it’s useful to make an assessment and analyse things. I prefer to make mistakes in pre-season so that the players can identify with the things you are proposing.”
Squad
“I don’t make any comparison. Last year is over. Many players performed extraordinarily well for us and left. Now different players have arrived and we are trying to get them to incorporate patterns and mechanisms and generate that confidence that will make them reach the performance we expect. Some players won’t reach their performance until a few weeks from now, but we have a very good team and we are facing the championship with the maximum guarantees.”
Sorloth and Brereton
“They are already seeing things and they are working hard to find out. They are asking a lot of questions, they want to adapt as soon as possible and they are working hard. I don’t know when they will be at their best, maybe it will be on Sunday. They are putting a lot of enthusiasm into it and we believe that they will not have any problems and they will adjust quickly. I’m very happy and there have been phases in these games that I’ve enjoyed and they’ve helped me to reinforce a lot of things.”
Goalkeeping situation
“I am very happy with the two goalkeepers we have. Filip has performed extraordinarily well in pre-season. He is a goalkeeper for the present and the future. I am absolutely convinced that Filip is going to have a great year and will help us.”
Betis
“The match will be very competitive. We’ve seen Betis’ performances in pre-season. We saw the problems they posed us on Matchday 25. They are a well-worked team with players of great quality. They’ll probably compromise us at times, but we can hurt them if we’re good on and off the ball and I hope we can resolve the game in our favour despite the fact that we’re going to encounter a lot of difficulties.”
The upcoming season
“The season is very long and there is an obvious potential of some teams compared to the rest with lower budgets or football teams that are a bit weaker, but these are just theories. To beat these teams you have to work a lot. These teams work better and better every day and offer a higher level of competitiveness to the category. It’s getting harder and harder to beat them.”
The start of the season
“The beginnings are always uncertain because you don’t know how to really measure yourself against the others and win a game you don’t deserve or vice versa and that gives you a wrong signal of what the championship is going to be like. We don’t want to be a team that wins one week and not the next. I would like my team to have a sense of consistency overall. As the season progresses we will see spells and there will be periods when we struggle more and others when there will be more lucidity and high inspiration.”
Being brave
“There are principles that are unchangeable and that we are going to stick to because we want to be a brave and recognisable team because we enjoy it and because we have the players for it.”
