Medilibar after Olympiacos – Panathinaikos: “We are not capable of defending ourselves”

He received a new “heavy” defeat, this time by 3-1 in “Karaiskakis” for the Super League 1 playoffs and José Luis Medilibar stood at the weakness of his team in defense. Medilibar noted that Olympiacos accepted seven goals in his last two games, although against Panathinaikos he had several players in his defense, arguing that only his players could not defend themselves effectively. Medilibar’s statements “In two minutes he turned the game, every time Panathinaikos came down he managed to score and that makes us believe and see that every time an opponent comes to our area he can easily score goals. This means that against strong groups, but with Maccabi and Panathinaikos, we find it very difficult to defend ourselves effectively.” For the 7 goals Olympiacos accepted in two games: “The team defends from front to back and attacks from back to front. But it is true that every time they reach our territory we suffer a lot. It’s very hard for us to get the ball out of there. It’s not that we accept the goals of opposition, it’s not that we have a few players in the area, we have people back and we can do organized defense but we don’t do it well, we don’t do it effectively. It is not that an opponent can threaten us with a rival, it is that when we are in our region, we are unable to defend ourselves effectively.” To choose to play in two for: “We put two strikers on because we tried to be effective in finishing the phases. We have seen in previous games that the ball is coming into the area, but we cannot finish the phase from either right or left or center. What we wanted was to strengthen the attack to end the phases with greater aim being closer to the area, but that made us weaker than the center and back and give space to the opponent.”