Although suspended, his brother Edward having officiated on the bench while he was in the stands, Will Still came to speak to the press after the 3-1 defeat of RC Lens in Bollaert against OM. If it was difficult for him not to criticize the refereeing, he who had declared in the past that he no longer wanted to talk about this type of subject, he above all focused on the ineffectiveness of his team. With a speech which seems to herald changes in future matches…
Lensois.com: Will Still, we had the feeling of witnessing a development that we had already seen in the past. Lens dominates the first period, gets chances, but doesn't score. And then the match becomes difficult… Is that your feeling too?
Affirmative. This inspires me that things need to change. It's nice to say that we have good first periods, that we have chances, that we play well, but if it doesn't make it 3-0 at half-time, you're going to regret it and that's it. is what happened to us. There is the ball which passes over the goalkeeper for the head of Deiver Machado, there is the face to face of David Pereira Da Costa, the situation of M'Bala Nzola, the head of Facundo Medina… If we manage to return to the locker room leading the score, the match is different, you are then able to manage, except that we don't score. This is repeated too often. At some point we have to change things, otherwise we will continue to tell ourselves that we are playing well, but the reality of football is decided by goals. Even the goal we score, there is a huge amount of effort to put into it for the ball to go in. We only have ourselves to blame.
How to change things?
By bringing more offensive players onto the field. And again, I say that but we have 16 strikes, 6 big chances, an Xg of almost 2 (editor's note: statistic which measures the number of goals that a team could have scored depending on the quality of the chances). But at some point there is a collective and individual awareness to be had. We need to be more demanding of ourselves.
We always have this feeling that after these big first periods, you falter a little physically after the break…
Yes, even if when we look at the first 2 goals, there is a corner for us, I don't know if it was badly hit but it flies away from where we wanted it and it's not normal that We go 100 meters back and then concede a goal. On the first there is a long game, we are not necessarily present on the first and the 2nd ball, we are not following a race… These are small details and I think that these are the first real situations for Marseille. The 3rd goal, if there is a fault on Angelo (Fulgini), there is a fault on Kevin (Danso) too. But the reality is that they score on their very first situations and we don't do it on our first 6.
“A cinema not possible in the tunnel, things not very clear in the 2nd half”
On VAR, there is in principle a notion of manifest error. What do you think about this situation?
From the moment the referee is 1m50 into the game and decides not to call the foul, it seems complicated to me. But we can talk about everything that happens before. There is a hand fault from Rabiot in the area, which leads to this phase which is not whistled, there is one on Angelo just before too, we can list them… But that's a lot of decisions which are questionable. Afterwards, you don't have to look from noon to 2 p.m. It is said that at half-time, there is an impossible cinema to put pressure on the referee, strangely in the 2nd half a lot of things happen which are not very clear. There are things that are not clear, it happens too often.
Is it the arbitration that causes Lens to lose?
No. No way. It's the fact that we don't score. But as a football fan, the referee has an important role to play. It's difficult not to talk about refereeing when Lens equalizes at 2-2.
How can you achieve this efficiency when your attackers are struggling to be realistic?
I have a good dose of creativity.
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