The coach of Olympiacos Jose Louis Mendilibar, during the press conference after our side’s away win in Lamia (1-5) post-Lamia, commented on the handful of changes in the red-and-white lineup.
Below follow details of the Basque coach’s press conference:
What did you like the most? That Olympiacos maintained the same tempo like in the Aris match or that certain players responded well to the opportunity offered?
I was satisfied by both. When one changes so many players in the line-up, there is a risk of failing to keep the same quality, tempo and speed in one’s performance. However, things went well since the first beginning, we were 3 goals up already by half time and then we stopped being reserved and worried since we could see that all players were able to deliver while maintaining both high tempo and quality.
Against Aris and Lamia alike, Olympiacos displayed good quality and tempo having Jovetic and El Kaabi in the starting eleven.
Indeed, Jovetic and El Kaabi’s collaboration has delivered so far for us. Jovetic is a player with attacking qualities, he always scores and we ask him to give us something extra on the pitch apart from scoring. We ask him to help the team in things that have to do with proceedings behind the attacking line, i.e. in the midfield. If he does one out of these two things, then he doesn’t make such a difference for us; if he does both things alike, then he truly valuable for us.
Is Olympiacos at its best shape ahead of the Fenerbahce tie?
It happened that we played like that so far, therefore it must be so. We look we are at a good shape and we will try to avail ourselves of that.
Have you called your friend, Ernesto Valverde?
Yes, I called him to say congratulations for winning the Cope del Rey. We didn’t talk about Olympiacos, but I told him that people in the Basque country are now experiencing crazy times but no as crazy as in here.
