Shakhtar coach pins Europa League exit on ‘too many costly errors’ against strong Marseille side
In the second leg of the Europa League round of 32 on Feb. 22, Shakhtar Donetsk lost to Olympique de Marseille (3-1) and crashed out of the European competition.
The Miners’ head coach Marino Pušić offered his assessment of the match results: Shakhtar made too many unforced errors, which led to the defeat and their Europa League elimination.
Read also: Marseille vs Shakhtar Donetsk: watch the live UEFA Europa League match
“Firstly, I want to congratulate the opponent because they deserved to win,” he said.
“At the same time, we started the match very well, controlled the game, created chances, scored a goal — we were on the right track to a positive result. And up to a certain point, everything was going quite well for us, which is not easy with such an opponent who has many individual qualities, physical strength, and support from the fans at the stadium.”
He notes that the Ukrainian side played well for the first 20-25 minutes, but then made a costly mistake.
“The opponent immediately took advantage of it with good transitions, and after that the energy of the game changed, we could no longer show our game, which upset me a little,” said Pušić.
Read also: Shakhtar Donetsk salvages draw with thrilling last-minute goal in Europa League playoffs
“But okay, I can understand it, because it’s not easy to get back into the game after that. In general, we started the second half with a score of 1-1 — it’s still a result, the game was still on. And even at the beginning of the second half, we had good possession of the ball. Marseille was quite adventurous: with the long pass and the second goal, the physical aspects, and so on.
In fact, I don’t know if we had many scoring chances, not really, but it was the same for the opponent: the fight lasted the whole game until we made another mistake and they scored and made it 2-1. And you know, at that moment we wanted to change something, we were ready for it, but immediately after that we conceded the third goal — out of nothing, also by mistake. So football is a game that depends on errors. Unfortunately, we made them three times, which is too many with such an opponent, at such a stadium.”
“Overall, I think Marseille deserved this victory,” the manager said, according to the Shakhtar website.
“It’s unfortunate for us because we started this game perfectly, as I said before — you can’t start an away match with Marseille in a better way. But this is football: those who make fewer mistakes will probably have a better result. And that’s what happened.”
A video of the goals and a review of the Marseille vs Shakhtar match are available on NV Sport.
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