Dedas: “We fought on an equal footing with Olympiakos who won fairly”

Stefanos Dedas stressed in the press conference after AEK’s defeat by Olympiakos in the semi-finals of the Greek Cup Final Four that Red-Whites won fairly while his side played young with the problems they had.

Details of what Stefanos Dedas said: “Congratulations to Olympiakos, they won fairly, but also to my team because we just fought. We’ve learned to play with problems, every match is very difficult for me to handle with several large and few guards.

I’m also proud of Flionis, not because of his defense or his dedication, but because I convinced him before the game to play at the level of Wokap or Larentzakis, because creatively Sloukas is at a better level. I’m trying to show the world that these kids have shots and decisions to make. It is not possible for Greek players to be Rolistas. I’m trying, but I can’t solve it alone.

The Greeks don’t always have to play defensively, they have to take on responsibility. Keith doesn’t count against absences because we never had him. But it’s difficult to miss three guards. We had good defence, good tactics, but we had a tough time in attack. We had done a lot of plays, the boys were very good at it.

The break is balm for us, for the kids to rest and for those who have been missing to come back so we can become AEK again. I’m not naive, but I’m not happy because I have three months to show that we can play basketball better. Olympiakos became suspicious but we knew that if we stayed in the game, time would pass in our favor. We didn’t claim the match evenly, we went to steal it.

Olympiakos was not really threatened. He was under a lot of pressure in a knockout game with the decimated AEK. We showed that we will be there and will not die so easily. The first goal now is to rest the stressed players, bring back the kids who are having a personal phase, get everyone back into their role.

This break is important to us. Let’s collect these 15 days, improve the squad’s image and build a streak, because now the cup is over. We want to be a better team because the character and the jersey are there“.

Dimitris Mavroidis was on the same wavelength: “It was a derby. We seemed worthy despite our problems. We struggled until the end at Olympiakos, except for five minutes in the third ten minutes. Good continuation at Olympiakos, we now want to improve our image and go higher in the league“.