Marcelino: "I’m very satisfied with the work the team did, but I would have liked 90 mins against 11 men"

Although he would have liked to have seen his side playing against eleven men for a longer period, Marcelino was happy with the performance of his side against Bayer 04 Leverkusen in the penultimate preseason friendly.

The match

“It’s a shame that the game broke down with our numerical superiority, because we are trying things out for the start of the season and the result wasn’t the most important thing. We were playing very well up until the sending off, dominating every facet of play, generating danger and making good attacking transitions. However, when Bayer 04 Leverkusen went down to ten men everything changed. There was a penalty after that, and a dry pitch because of the tremendous heat -although that is something that is good for us to get used to facing. I’m very satisfied with the work the team did, but I would have liked to have played 90 minutes against eleven men.”

Continuing from the game against Sporting CP

“It’s normal to be inconsistent in preseason. We can also be inconsistent in the league season at times. We’re not preparing games but rather continuing our preseason preparations. How tired you are has a bearing on things as well. We have all this in mind. There is no point in preparing for a preseason game, as preseason is about a series of games. Matches are training sessions against an opponent, with the aim of reaching the start of the season in the best shape possible.”

The bwin Trofeo Naranja

“We can’t wait to play in front of our fans again, and for the league season to start. We’re training but we have the desire to compete and the wait for the first game drags on. Inter will be very demanding opponents for us, after having won the cup and qualified for the Champions League. We are going to start the season better than we did the last campaign, and hopefully we can perform well against Inter and beat Real Sociedad. We played well against Bayer Leverkusen last year at Mestalla, but didn’t manage to beat Atletico Madrid.”

Diakhaby ahead of Gabriel Paulista in the pecking order?

“No. What we are doing is trying things out based on who has niggles, who is tired and who is in form. We have three high level centre backs and we want to complete the squad with a fourth. We have full confidence in the three that we have, and we will decide from there on our lineup choices.”

The Bayer 04 Leverkusen penalty

“We have to try to avoid conceding penalties. We had a phase last season in which we gave away several avoidable penalties, and we have to learn from that. We can’t make mistakes once the season starts.”