“Well, thank you all for your efforts on behalf of our players and staff and all the people that made this happen. Today we want to be very grateful to the fans. The environment today was phenomenal. Just seeing them in the stadium, supporting us is the best sensation we can have and to return it with winning helps us enjoy tonight. It’s great. Thank you so much to our fans. I think we were the best team of this series, but the game just put us in that situation. When they score goals and they sit back, we felt we couldn’t open up those lines. But finally, we did, and the PKs is probably a result that is very fair for the effort that we made during the series.”
“I have to congratulate the coach [Dean Smith] as he complicated things with the system that I respect. He reduced the lines in the spaces, and they were difficult to find, even though we found many more answers today offensively than in the past game at Charlotte. We were more offensive. I think we hit the post twice in the first half. We have many other options that were clear, and we know we made a mistake, and we made one, and that was very costly for a series like this. That’s why, I guess, the push from our team, and the belief, and again, the energy from our fans, is everything. Just get together and allow us to tie that game. This is another step that you know, is one of those things that you can’t control sometimes. I think our [penalty] takers were very precise today and had a lot of personality so very well deserved.”
On playing Charlotte three times in a row
“That is why I want to congratulate Coach Smith. I think he made the movements and made our game model more complicated. In some moments today, they defended with a line of five, and it was a surprise for us, because I had not seen it before when we faced them. We had that well though. The initiative was the same and we tried to put some passes together and counter attacks. We needed to be so precise in how we mark that preventive, and how we make our vigilantes. That one, when [Karol] Swiderski got in behind against Robin [Jansson] is what that proposal is for. That’s what they were waiting for. Then they clog again the box. We tried, but it’s not easy. They defend well in box. I think our initiative was good all the time. Very difficult to play three times with the same team with no other opportunity to play against anyone else is hard. It really is. For them too.”
