The match in Kielce did not go the way Lechia had hoped, as they fell 0:3 to Korona. Head coach John Carver summed up the 10th round of the PKO Bank Polski Ekstraklasa.
The coach’s comments on the match:
Our little marathon has come to an end. I think in games like this, when two good teams face each other, you have to take your chances when you create them. Unfortunately, in this match we didn’t do that, which is unusual for us. Of course, I could go into details about each of the three goals we conceded and point out what went wrong, but I’ll hold off on making that judgment until I’ve watched them again. I want to congratulate coach Zieliński and the entire Korona team. I think everyone can see the work he’s done since he arrived here. We knew it would be a tough match, and it certainly was. Still, I believe we had our chances — we could easily have scored two or even three goals. We hit the post twice and had opportunities in key moments that we didn’t capitalize on. For the first time, I saw my team playing withdrawn, looking uncomfortable, but I believe these players still want to play for me and for this club.This is a very difficult moment for me, but we have to do everything we can to play better in our next match in six or seven days. I’m not going to talk about the fact that it was our third match in six days. As I’ve said before, if you want to be successful, you have to learn to face strong opponents every three days. I think today’s game is a good lesson for everyone in our club.
The White-and-Green side conceded three goals without scoring any. How to prevent that:
That’s a good question. I’d be very happy if I knew the answer to it. Of course, it’s always easy to focus on the negative and wonder why we conceded those goals. I think by now you know me well enough to know that I have an analytical mind, and as soon as I sit down, I’ll analyze those goals in detail. What I can say is that we’ve had different players in those positions, yet we keep making the same mistakes.
After the Polish Cup match, Lechia had one day less to recover than their opponent. Did that have an impact?
It certainly could have been a factor. I don’t want to get paranoid about it, but every time we look at the schedule, we seem to have less recovery time. That was the case this time — many Ekstraklasa teams played a day earlier, and some will now play a day later. We had only three days’ rest, three away matches, and a lot of kilometers traveled by bus. It’s something that’s on my mind and something I take into account, but we won’t make excuses when we were beaten by the better team. I’m aware of what’s happened over the last six days.”
