Roger Schmidt felt for the first time what it was like to lose as Benfica’s coach. All that the reds have been with the German coach, this Friday, against Sp. Braga as he himself admitted.
“We didn’t expect to play the way we played today. We trained well during the week, but we were not connected as always. We play a lot sideways and backwards instead of forwards. We were not compact and aggressive without the ball. We lost many duels. We show that in football it is very difficult to always maintain the same level. We won many games and, perhaps, today we realized how difficult it was”, described Schmidt right at the end of the game.
Not even the return of Enzo Fernández and Otamendi, who were proclaimed world champions in Qatar playing for Argentina, helped improve performance. In the case of Enzo Fernández, the possibility of having played the last game with an eagle on his chest is not ruled out, since there are teams, specifically Chelsea, willing to pay the value of the midfielder’s release clause, set at €120 million
“I don’t know if it was Enzo’s last game with Benfica. What I do know is that he is a great player. He has been playing fantastic. Benfica will have to make decisions. Let’s see what happens next week,” Schmidt said.
Abel Ruiz’s goal, in minute two, and Ricardo Horta’s two ended up building a solid result in favor of Minho. The Benfica coach considered that the 3-0 ended up being fair. “Braga was better from the first minute. They scored at the right time and it was difficult for us to recover and show our maximum level. they deserved to win”.
At the same time, Roger Schmidt played down the defeat that appeared 29 official matches after seizing the place. “It’s football. We weren’t going to win every game. we deserve to losebecause we weren’t good enough,” he lamented.
Source: Observadora
