AEK coach: “Nothing has been determined yet”

Jose Luis Oltra, head coach of Cyprus AEK from Larnaca, commented on the away win against Dnipro-1 (2: 1) in the first playoff match of the Europa League qualifiers.

“Today we had a positive result, but nothing was determined. The return match in Larnaca is ahead and it will be very difficult for us. I am very happy with the performance of our team in the first half, we played very well. In the second half we always had to defend. Dnipro-1 took the initiative, they have very good players and we saw that in the second half, above all their skills in the game. However, I am optimistic about the future of the second game. I hope the atmosphere in Larnaca will be very good, today we will be able to play a positive result and play like we did in the first half. Verticality in attack, attack in space and dynamics – all this is exactly what we did well today.I hope we show a match like this in Larnaca.

– How did you cope with the pressure of Dnipro-1 in the second half?

– We must understand that Dnipro-1 is a very strong competitor with very strong players. We didn’t try to change anything during the break of the match. During the timeout I told the guys that we have a great opportunity to win, to score more goals, so we shouldn’t change anything in our game. And we have not changed, but the Dnieper-1 has. They started putting more pressure, they started playing more aggressively and we couldn’t always cope. Nevertheless, we look forward to the second match, which we will try to win with an excellent result and the support of our fans.

– Before the match, many people were talking about your team’s defense problems and the team gave up again after the set ball. Is this a problem?

– Yes, it’s a problem, but we have to understand that today we played well in defense in general, and if we talk about the first half, it was excellent overall. There were mistakes in the second half, but he improved himself in the opponent match. Dnipro had a lot of technical players playing well in the midfield and it was really tough for us. But before the game we would all have been happy to win 2-1, so now we should be happy. Of course, the game has some parameters that we need to improve – it’s about standards and we’ve often been very bad after the break, but we have to understand who we’re playing against the team that played in the Europa League recently. It’s the final against Sevilla, so we have to remember that and be happy with the result.