Jardim shares joy with Olympiacos supporters
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
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Leonardo Jardim's predominant emotion after Olympiacos FC overcame Arsenal FC was happiness for the club's fans, while Arsène Wenger also found positives in defeat.
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Leonardo Jardim, Olympiacos coach
We are not satisfied tonight because we did not fulfill our primary objective to make it the last 16. But we're happy for two reasons. Firstly, we wanted to win to get in the pool of strong teams in the Europa League draw and secondly because we gave joy to our supporters. The Champions League is a top European competition and everyone, including coaches and players, want to take part. We have to focus on the Europa League which is also a top competition.
It was a great victory for us ahead of the derby against Panathinaikos at the weekend and proves that our team is more than just 11 players. We have solutions and options to come back. We did it tonight and we did it against Montpellier. We weren't ready against Schalke on matchday one because of the late start to the domestic league and our players weren't as sharp as they should be and also because the team has lots of newcomers and some last-minute transfers.
I'm not happy we didn't make it even though we garnered nine points. That should be a lesson to us not to squander points in the opening match and be more prepared. Olympiacos have a lot of young Greek players with great potential and quality. This is good for the team's future and there is a lot of room for improvement.
Arsène Wenger, Arsenal manager
It was an interesting game. We had a good first half and we had two or three chances to score a second goal, but we needed a second goal tonight. The younger players did well for an hour, that is very positive; they have the quality. We had a positive game. It was not the result we wanted but overall it was a very encouraging game.
Olympiacos are a very strong team. Their basic problem is that they twice started the Champions League with defeats at home and away and after two games they had zero points. It's not a matter of quality.
We have to wait for the draw but we wanted to finish first. We need a good Christmas present. Some teams can get stronger until then, including ourselves. It important for us to focus on the championship and get ourselves back in decent form. We're not happy with things tonight but I'm happy with the desire of the team.
