A two one Etihad loss to Barcelona in the 1st leg of the last 16 stage of the Champions League last night has certainly created a few waves – here’s a round up of manager Manuel Pellegrini’s after match interviews.
The Official Site focuses on his comments surrounding goalkeeper Joe Hart’s penalty save from Lionel Messi and the fact that the manager believes it could be a crucial moment going into the second leg.
I think everyone appreciates that if we manage to turn it around at the Nou Camp and take victory now – Hart’s save will be considered the defining moment of the 180 minutes when it comes to history, especially with the way Messi fubared his attempted diving header as the ball came back to him.
‘It is not the best result here at home. We are going to play in Barcelona and we will try and do it the way we normally play. We have a chance. We must try to do it there in the next game. It was a very important save. It was an unnecessary penalty. Of course it gives us more chance to try and win in Barcelona, but 3-1 would have been a very difficult score to try and overturn.’
Two one is going to be difficult enough, especially factoring in the away goal issue unless we can balance that out ourselves, but with a 90 minutes showing given how we performed in the second half it’s possible but we just can’t play in that tentative manner again.
‘I’m not thinking about what happened last year. There is hope and we must support that hope by playing the way we normally do and did in the second half. If we don’t play to our strengths, it is not easy for our team to win.’
Others in the mainstream press carry different elements, and the manager admitted that in many ways it was a case of the same old mistakes coming back to haunt us – especially another soft and needless sending off – but again he kept coming back to the fact we have a chance and we need to embrace that hope.
‘Barcelona managed to get through the game without committing errors. We committed mistakes. Until the goal the game was quite even. With the way we play, I think we can do it. In the second half we demonstrate we are a good. It is important not to make the same mistakes. We cannot have a player sent off every game against Barcelona. We played two different games – the first half and the second.’
Pellegrini built on his comments about the game being even until the first goal by saying also.
‘Until the first goal was a very normal game and after that we concede an easy goal and played very bad until the first half finished. In the second half I think we played well, we scored one goal and had two or three more chances to draw. After that we repeat the same mistake as last year, which was to have one player sent off. It is very difficult to play against Barcelona with 10. We finished with the penalty and Joe saved very well.’
There’s usually a sense of repetition in the various coverage of an after match press conference, but with how repetitive some of the coverage is with a different set of quotes explaining the same things, I guess Pellegrini was as frustrated with the same questions being asked a different way as he was with the result.
‘In the first half we couldn`t put three passes together and there was a bit of confusion. We committed a very soft error for the first goal. We managed to be calmer in the second we pressed well and did well to hang on and almost get something from the game.
With various pundits having their say, there has also been a fair bit of discussion on whether Pellegrini got the tactics, formation and selection wrong for the game – but he rejected those suggestions focusing on our performance in the first half as the reason for the loss, rather than anything tactically or the choice of two strikers.
‘I am very happy with the way we played. It was the way we must play against Barcelona. I think we demonstrated that in the second half with the same names. Barcelona will always dominate some parts of the game, the midfield, but I repeat with the same players in the second half – and losing 2-0 that is more difficult – I think that we demonstrated that that was the way we must play from the first minute. We didn’t play in the first half, that is why it was impossible to try to win more when you concede an easy goal so it was more easy for Barcelona to retain and keep the ball longer. I think if we played the first half in the way we did the second half, surely the score would have been another one.’
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