Blanc purring after 'excellent' Paris display
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Article summary
Laurent Blanc hailed Paris Saint-Germain's "excellent" performance after his side's 4-0 defeat of Bayer 04 Leverkusen, who found it "difficult" to respond to falling behind early on.
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Sami Hyypiä, Leverkusen coach
You can't say that it all went wrong. You also have to look at what kind of team we faced. Paris are a top-class opponent and they were excellent. If you fall behind after three minutes it is always difficult to fight back. It became very difficult and we never found our usual rhythm during the first half. After their first goal it took us 15 to 20 minutes to get back into the game. In the second half we had a man [Emir Spahić] sent off and I felt that we were better with ten men than 11.
Laurent Blanc, Paris coach
We will try to enjoy this away success, first of all. After Valenciennes [a 3-0 home win on Friday] I could see we have a very focused team – everyone was waiting for this game for a long time. When you're in that mindset everything is fine, plus we scored a goal in the third minute, which makes things easier. You could point out Leverkusen's weaknesses, but our display was excellent.
Spirits are really good. I congratulate those who started and those who came on. I can rely on everyone. We are not through yet. We came here to play well and our preparations proved to be good. The way we played totally satisfied me, both from a team and an individual point of view.
