Schuster content with tough night's work
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
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Dick Advocaat was left to rue FC Zenit St. Petersburg's failure to take advantage of "14 or 15" chances as they lost 2-1 to a Real Madrid CF side whose coach was delighted to leave the fancied Russian club point-less.
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Dick Advocaat, Zenit coach
It's another very disappointing result. In the beginning we were nervous, giving them too much space in midfield and giving away two easy goals. At half-time we changed things tactically, did well and deserved at least a draw. If you create so many chances against a team like Madrid, then you must have a quality team – we had 14 or 15 chances to score. We've played away at Juventus and at home to Madrid and have played well but picked up no points. In football, it is the result that matters.
The only good thing is that we played well and deserved more, so we have to get points in our next games [home and away against FC BATE Borisov] and at home against Juventus – this will be key in deciding where we'll finish in the section. My players perform at a high level and have proved they can score goals; we've scored more goals than any other team in the domestic league so it's nothing to do with nervousness. It's exceptional to create so many chances, but if you create them you have to score them. You either have a killer instinct or you don't. I can't teach the players to score goals – I can create an attacking model, but turning this into goals is down to them.
Bernd Schuster, Madrid coach
It's an important victory from a tough match in St. Petersburg. We've done our job because we've left Zenit without any points. There were times when it was tough, they were pushing for a draw, especially at the end, but we got the three points and that's the most important thing. Zenit had chances to equalise and probably deserved a draw. After going ahead at the beginning of the match we found it easy to switch from defence to attack and that relaxed us.
It became harder for us to do that later in the game but Zenit are a great team and we're playing in the Champions League so you can't expect to dominate all the time. It was surprising that Zenit weren't as attacking at the end of the first half as they were at the end of the second, although that might have been because of the substitutions they made which allowed them to up the tempo and become more dangerous at the end.