“Very disappointed,” Wouter Vrancken described his feeling after the heavy defeat (4-1) at Cercle. “All week we emphasized the fact that without intensity we would have no chance. Yet that is exactly what we were missing here.”
“It’s all in your head,” the Genk coach put his finger on the wound. “We did not fail here from a football technical or tactical point of view. This isn’t about poor controls or playing with three, four or five defenders. Well, for the sake of it, we were trumped in terms of intensity. We lost the matches and were late on every second ball. That is the basis against a team like Cercle. If you miss that, you will be behind the times and you will also lose confidence on the ball. While we started well and took the lead with a nice goal. But even that wasn’t enough to take control of the match. While the space was there: we found it often enough, but we also lacked efficiency.”
In addition, Racing was guilty of individual errors. “We gave away the goals far too easily,” Vrancken sighed. “Easy to lose the ball, letting players run away from our backs, being outplayed in duels. It wasn’t just our defenders who made the mistake, it was a collective problem. That’s too bad. And difficult to grasp, because we did very well a few weeks ago. But just like against Club, things went wrong here in Bruges.”
His team scored eleven goals in three games. It provides food for thought. “A few weeks ago we were praised for our stability, now we concede a lot of goals. It is certainly something we need to work on. As said, it’s all in your head. Everyone must realize that it must be more. We are still in fourth place, which is higher than at the start of these play-offs. We have everything in our own hands. But to achieve our European goal, we have to improve on the level of our first matches.”
Miron Muslic was rightly over the moon after the 4-1 win. “This was one of our best performances of the season. Not only was our pressing good, the quality during the changeover was also very high. We knew it had to be quick and precise, you have to get defenders like Sadick, Cuesta and McKenzie to face our own goal. Then they become vulnerable. We played it out brilliantly with sharp crosses or balls backwards from the goal line.”
The Cercle coach still saw room for improvement. “We gave away too many goal chances, especially at 4-1. We also have to take that into account in the coming weeks. Without complete focus it will not work, we will become too vulnerable.” (mg)
