Win 'changes everything' for Garcia's Lille
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Article summary
Rudi Garcia said his LOSC Lille Métropole team had learned from their previous Group B slips to defeat a PFC CSKA Moskva side weakened, in their coach's view, by "endless injuries".
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Leonid Slutski, CSKA coach
Our plan was to defend well and try to break behind Lille's defence with long passes. Their defenders play quite high and we should have used the spaces they left. Lille were better today.
We're forced to constantly fix the holes in our squad because of the endless injuries. It's extremely tough to play in the UEFA Champions League with these sort of problems, especially against a team like Lille.
With the score at 1-0 and 2-0 we had only youngsters on the bench, some who haven't even played a match in our domestic league. We had no one to strengthen the attack. [Sergei] Ignashevich got injured in the first half. He played as long as he could.
Rudi Garcia, Lille coach
We played in line with what we did in [the 0-0 weekend draw at] Toulouse, but this time we were efficient. We had much of the play and did the most important thing by scoring and then doubling the lead. Thus we were beyond a twist of fate. We played a semi-final. We used the first game [conceding twice late on to draw 2-2 at home] as an example knowing we had to stay focused until the last minute. After the second goal, we kept putting the pressure on them. We were smart enough at the same time to manage the lead.
[At half-time] I told them to keep punching, to continue in the same way. Our second half was very good and this is a win which changes everything. We knew we could be out tonight but we also knew that we could definitely be in. We know what we have to do now. We said we had to learn quickly and tonight the boys showed they had learned from our first four matches, including the first game against CSKA.
