Like his players, Joe Montemurro was not satisfied with OL's score for an hour against Roma. However, the coach highlighted Lyon's character to secure qualification (4-1).
Joe Montemurro, there was an OL before the Roma goal and one after this goal…
Montemurro: Yes, two teams. Look, it's funny because I thought in the second half we had sorted out some problems from the first half and we obviously made a mistake to concede the goal which was purely our fault. It's an interesting match, because there were difficulties in the first half. We were probably a little too long in the distances, we weren't connected and we didn't find the moments to recover the ball. But sometimes you have to win matches in different ways and we found a way.
Did you have to raise your voice and tone during the break?
Did you hear anything? (smile) Look, I was clear that we weren't good in certain areas and we fixed that. You've been following the club for 10, 11 weeks and perfection is very, very difficult to establish when the team has been very, very good over the last seven, eight weeks. There will always be one of those matches where it won't be as good. But again, the character of the group showed that they reacted at the right time.
“The objective has been achieved with this qualification”
How do you explain the first half and the difference with the derby?
Tactically, I think we were probably a little behind in the defensive phase. I think we haven't been smart enough to keep the team one way, whereas we are very good when we keep the team at bay and can press in numbers. This (Wednesday) night we allowed Roma to spin and come back and then we pulled back and dug in a little bit more. So we had to make a tactical decision at half-time.
Isn't there a little fatigue, a little exhaustion perhaps? I don't know. But that's not an excuse I want to use with this team. Once again, for us, these matches, when we get a good result, serve as a learning experience and we must learn from them. All the credit goes to Roma. They studied us and many of them harassed us with the ball, which prevented us from finding solutions to score.
Qualification is the most important thing this (Wednesday) evening?
A tournament in football is about moving forward and we had to move forward this (Wednesday) evening. As I said, the objective was achieved. But, it was probably a good learning match where we had to win in a different way, which we did.
