BARCELONA – Fifteen games later, Ronald Koeman, for the first time, seemed to surrender to the evidence. If until today his untouchable speech focused on “a long season ahead”, after the draw against Eibar, he has already acknowledged that the thought of winning the League is a little less than a chimera.
“Being realistic, the championship is very complicated. Nothing is impossible in this life, but we must recognize that reducing the distance between Atlético, which is very good, will be very difficult,” proclaimed the Dutch coach, honestly and in a tone defeatist who had never been contemplated before.
Koeman acknowledged this circumstance, but remained unaltered in proclaiming that his team, as in other games, should have won because, he said, “we played a good game,” recovering, he assured. from a first half in which things did not turn out as expected. .
“In the first half we had problems getting the ball out of the back. We didn’t look for a game between the lines and I don’t know why, for fear of not risking playing upstairs … But we had opportunities again,” he said. , without wanting to enter to assess whether Messi’s absence had been decisive.
“I don’t want to say that we lacked experienced people … There is a transition in the team, there are injuries and we play with a lot of young people. But today there was a lot of experience in the team and yes, we lacked Leo who makes the difference, but the feeling is one of us to think that it is not possible not to have won because we created many chances, we missed a penalty, we scored a goal in his only shot on goal … There were many things against ”lamented the coach Dutchman, who denied that Messi’s absence was so important.
“We didn’t win because we’re not Leo … We had a good game, but it’s hard for us to score and just like in other games, the individual mistakes weighed us down too much. It happened like in other games,” he said. he summed up.