With a nucleus of a dozen players, as wide as a provincial team, Ivan Leko works in particularly difficult conditions, at the standard. The Croatian draws up a first assessment before the trip to Malines, the first of the three games “for butter”.
Out of reach of the first place in Europe Play-Offs, the standard can already draw a first assessment. Quite fatalistic, this Friday at a press conference, Ivan Leko does the maximum but must deal with an incredibly limited group (read here).
“We wanted to do everything to do something well in play-offs 2, but we can’t win. We take pleasure when we win, and we don’t win. We managed to save the team, but the feeling that remains is that of the last match, so we are sad. And when, with a very small nucleus, we lose players every week … We wait two or three weeks for it to be finished …”
Yes, strongly the end of the season “
“Yes, strongly the end of the season,” he replied with a resigned smile. “It will be good to disconnect and learn the lessons of this season. Everyone is waiting for good news, what will be the project, if it will be possible to do more or not. Today, we have to do their maximum to just play a match, prepare a match …”, breathes Ivan Leko, as if he was waiting for guarantees when he returned to vacation to determine his future.
Ivan Leko will retain the integration of young people into the nucleus A
Standard therefore lives a two -speed season. A rather successful classic phase by taking into account the circumstances, then of the Europe play-offs catastrophic. Ivan Leko will keep the entire course in memory, including young players he was able to (or) hoist the first division.
“We will talk about everything in our analysis, the preparation for the Play-offs 2.. We must not only retain the first thirty games, even if it was incredible to finish 7th in this situation. Our current bad results also prove how good our classic phase was.”
“A very good thing for the club is that we have promoted five or six players (he quotes Epolo, Hautekiet, Dierckx, Lawrence, Kuavita, Camara and Karamoko). Last year, no one believed that these players could evolve in D1A and they did it.”
