BARCELONA – Fifteen games later, Ronald Koeman seemed to surrender to the evidence for the first time. If his speech to this day, untouchable, focused on “there is a lot of season ahead”, he admitted after the draw against Eibar that thinking about winning the League is nothing short of a chimera.
“Being realistic is the championship very complicated. Nothing is impossible in this life, but we have to recognize that reducing the points distance with Atlético, which is very good, will be very difficult,” the Dutch coach stated sincerely and with a tone. defeatist who had not been seen before.
Koeman admitted that circumstance but remained unchanging by stating that, as in other games, his team should have won because, he said, “we played a good game,” recovering, he assured, of a first half in which it was not ran as expected. .
“In the first half we had problems getting the ball from behind. We weren’t looking for a match between the lines and I don’t know why, for fear of playing upstairs … But we had opportunities again,” he concluded, without to estimate whether Messi’s absence had been decisive.
“I don’t want to say that we lacked experienced people … There is a transition in the team, there are injuries and we play with a lot of young people. But today there was a lot of experience in the team and yes, we missed Leo. makes a difference, but the feeling is one of them thinking that it is not possible not to have won because we created enough chances, we missed a penalty, we gave away a goal in his only shot at goal … There are encountered many things ” complained the Dutch coach, who refused that Messi’s mistake was so memorable.
“We didn’t win because we’re not Leo … We had a good game, but it’s hard for us to score and like in other games, individual mistakes weighed too heavily on us. It’s happened like in other games. “he summed up.