Blanc praises 'perfect' PSG after Benfica success
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
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Paris Saint-Germain FC will "certainly win the group" according to SL Benfica coach Jorge Jesus after Laurent Blanc's men "mastered the game" against their Group C rivals.
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Laurent Blanc, PSG coach
The scoreline is perfect. When you look at a game, you always have room for improvement, but I enjoyed it because we mastered the game and this is a key to our playing style. Tonight we got it right from first to last minute.
The biggest players are always raring to go in the Champions League. [Zlatan Ibrahimović] is somebody who has never won it. I think that he, as well as the whole team, is hungry for it. Tonight he delivered a very, very good display. I particularly liked his movement. He flew away from his marker, literally, either on the left or to the right.
Two wins in two games in this competition is a very good thing. Let's enjoy it a bit. We have time to turn to another big game on Sunday at Marseille. Our midfield was good but it is not set in stone. Other teams will try to counter us there. We must be able to change it, in particular to put Edinson [Cavani] in better positions.
Jorge Jesus, Benfica coach
We played against the best team in the group, a very strong team that I am sure will go far in the Champions League. They have great players and we were not able to stop them in the first half. We were a bit surprised by the position [Zlatan] Ibrahimović played and that made things much harder for us. PSG proved they are strongest team in this group and they deserved this victory.
At half-time, losing 3-0 with 45 minutes to go, it was dangerous to allow more goals. We adjusted our tactics, Ibrahimović didn't run at us as much as in the first half and that allowed us to be a little better. Nonetheless, it is a heavy defeat for us, even though we knew before the game that PSG were favourites. Now we have to try to get second place, which I think will be decided between ourselves and Olympiacos, because PSG will certainly win the group.
Last year we did not start well either but we cannot make comparisons with last season because we have different opponents. In this campaign we have lost one game and won the other. Our goal is to be in the next stage and everything is still open. We have to learn some lessons from tonight, but we cannot forget that we were playing a really strong team.
