As soon as their opponents in the Champions League were known, Stade Brestois targeted the match against Shakhtar as a potential source of points. A feeling which, as the meeting approached and while he had capitalized brilliantly in the meantime, grew stronger over time.
Faced with a Ukrainian team with only one success so far in the competition, and whose last official match dates back to mid-December, the opportunity was all the more beautiful as a victory would have made it possible to maintain the hope of direct access in the final phase. Clearly, this was not the case.
Because as against Auxerre, Montpellier or Angers in the championship, all teams against which Brest presented itself in the position of favorite, Eric Roy's men completely missed their start to the match, pulling away from the start a bullet in the foot. Far, very far from the face that they are nevertheless capable of displaying against superior teams on paper (Leverkusen, Eindhoven, Lyon, etc.).
“Not a superiority complex”
Weighed down by individual errors and abandoned by several executives (Chardonnet and Bizot in the lead, Lala and Camara to a lesser extent), did they sin through pride? Did they make a mistake in the way they approached the meeting? To this question, Eric Roy was categorical. “I don't think they (the players) thought they were the favorites. It's not a superiority complex that we have. »
“Not at the level” of the event according to their coach, the Brestois also did not expect to come across such a dashing opponent. “We perhaps thought that they were going to slow down, compared to the lack of rhythm that they had compared to us,” conceded Hugo Magnetti, adding that everyone in Brest was “surprised by the intensity that they put in, and this physical side.”
-Roy: “They surprised us…”
Obviously blunted by the sequence of matches and penalized by several absences, the Finisterians were never able to develop their game. And if Shakhtar really did not steal their victory, it was in their preparation and on the tactical terrain that he won it above all, according to Eric Roy.
“We had studied this team a lot and we found that they played with very interior full-backs. But this evening (Wednesday), that was not the case at all. They surprised us by playing five Brazilians, much more than in their previous Champions League matches. »
Deprived of the ball, his players were never able to deploy a game plan that quickly became illegible. Asked to decipher his 4-4-2 square, “King Eric” retorted that “no, it wasn’t a square at all. But hey, you may have seen it like that…”. A reframing immediately followed by a concession. “Each system has its qualities and its defects. What we need is to be able to animate it, which we didn't manage to do this evening, especially when we didn't have the ball in the first half.” Knowing that we don't approach a match against Le Havre or against Real in the same way either.
