“A very close match whose result was decided due to a small detail”

Gaizka Garitano showed his satisfaction with the job his footballers have done despite the one-goal margin defeat against Real Madrid in Matchweek 34 in LaLiga. This is how the red-and-white coach evaluates the game: “The first 10-15 minutes, they started better, but the last half an hour before the break, our side played really well, with intensity, and I believe we bettered them. In the second half nothing happened at any of both goal areas. They had more possession but never creating any danger. The match was very close and we knew that, seeing how things were going, if the result was meant to change it would be due to a small detail, in favour of one or the other side. And we lost the match in that penalty”.

Garitano emphasised the great deal of effort put in by his players until the end in such a wearing match, trying to clinch a point against the current league leaders:: “It’s a shame we couldn’t get anything from the game after our players had done such a good job. Preventing Real Madrid from creating chances until the 70th minute required an enormous amount of physical effort and it stands to reason that we had to slow down our pace in the last minutes of the game. But that’s the way we expected to end it, exhausted. Now our people have to recover after sweating our guts out and get ready for the fixture against Sevilla. We have to add points in threes, we’ve done a good comeback these past weeks, but we’ll need to pick up a handful of points in our last four games.”