Valencia effort in Lyon pleases Espírito Santo
Tuesday, September 29, 2015
Article summary
"Hard work has paid off," said Nuno Espírito Santo as he sang the praises of his "well-organised" Valencia side following their 1-0 victory away to Olympique Lyonnais.
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- Valencia leave Olympique Lyonnais with three points thanks to Sofiane Feghouli
- Nuno Espírito Santo champions Valencia's hard work and organisation
- Lyon coach Hubert Fournier laments his side's lack of cutting edge
Hubert Fournier, Olympique Lyonnais coach
This defeat will force us to win away from home. It is not good losing at home, but if we play like tonight we will have our chances. We were a bit naive with their goal. We also played against a great Valencia goalkeeper. Last season our games were not much better – the difference was that we scored goals.
If you do not score you cannot go through. Against Zenit, we will do what we did tonight – raise the level of our game and find ways of scoring goals. This is a bad result for us, but the performance of my players gives me hope.
Nuno Espírito Santo, Valencia coach
I want to start by congratulating my players. Hard work has paid off. This win is very important. We worked well today. We had to fight until the end. I want to thank the fans as well. We had a lot of chances in the first half and we defended well. This is a deserved win. I am lucky enough to have several good goalkeepers and I am happy about that.
My defence was well-organised, solid and we handled the Lyon front line well. My squad is very balanced and we are happy and proud to have won here against a very good team. Possession was essential to our plan. We changed it in the second half. We defended well and played looking for [Pablo] Piatti and [Sofiane] Feghouli on the wings and that worked for us in the end.
Sofiane Feghouli, Valencia midfielder
It was very important to win after the Zenit defeat. I have to congratulate everyone on their efforts: we played at a hellish pace. We had a plan, which was to stay tight in the first half and let our full-backs attack their full-backs – it worked very well. In the second half we changed our plan and we had to defend more, but it was very important for our confidence that we won.