We invite you to listen to the post-match press conference with coach Radosław Bella.
– I will start by congratulating coach Górak and his team. In the first half, they were definitely the better team. In the second half, the match was more balanced, and it was two different halves. There’s no point in deceiving ourselves; we are in a difficult situation, even a very difficult one, but it is not without a way out. – said coach Bella. – The reason for the lost match partly lies in the first half, because we couldn’t deal with the pressing on our central defenders, and that’s why we constantly had the Katowice team in our half. In the second half, after changing the formation and making adjustments, it looked better. It seems to me that, apart from the tactical aspect, there is also an issue with taking responsibility for the game in the first minutes, for the result, and for the ball. It seems that we only start playing when we have nothing to lose. At least that’s how it was in this match. These are my immediate observations. We keep saying that we are a young team, and that is of course true, because you can’t mature in a week, but we need to mature very quickly because time is passing, and there’s no time for jokes.
We have to look ahead. Now, the next match is against Śląsk, which will be a crucial match for our situation in the standings. Before the match, I said in an interview that we are a team with huge potential, because that’s true. However, right now we are a light that doesn’t shine, and we simply need to do everything to turn that light on and bring some optimism to our environment and our team.
I am truly sorry that you and the fans cannot see the team that I see in training. We simply need to start showing it in matches, because time is running out, and we need to start earning points.
We need a reset, and I hope that this reset will begin on Monday, with the new coach, and we will be able to approach the new week and the new match with some optimism. We simply need to cut ourselves off from the past and the current situation with a thick line, because otherwise, it will be difficult for us. I could say that the second half is encouraging, and so on, but we need to improve in many areas. We need to improve, and as an assistant, I will do my best to ensure that happens, and we will try to finish this round with a victory, because we haven’t won in a long time, and we need to win. Then, perhaps with slightly better or maybe less bad moods, we will be able to start preparations for the next round.
About what was missing for a goal in the second half:
– I think it’s a repeat of what happened in the match against Pogoń. I quoted a statistic at the pre-match press conference that we had 32 crosses and 5 accurate ones, and I think the key is still in that final pass. Today’s plan was to attack GKS’s defense a bit earlier, to avoid running into the penalty area and playing there, because GKS defends with a large number of players – they have tall players, taller than ours. We don’t have a physically tall team, so we wanted to do it a little earlier. The quality of the final pass let us down a bit. I haven’t had a chance to check the statistics of this match yet, but I think it might have been similar, that the crosses might have been a bit better, but in the end, the player has to deliver an accurate cross.
On the players’ mentality:
– I think that 80% of our players are facing this situation for the first time. It’s easier to play in a big club with high expectations when you’re winning, as it was in the first division. I wouldn’t want to refer to last season anymore, because we’ve been talking about it for too long. It’s much harder to show your quality when things aren’t going well. Suddenly, from the position of a student, you have to become a teacher – a teacher for yourself and a teacher for each teammate individually. I think this is the problem.
About the atmosphere in the locker room after the match:
– The players have their heads down. I had a slightly different plan for this press conference, to strongly try to motivate the team through you, the media, but I know it wouldn’t have helped because I could see that the players took this defeat very hard.
About the conversation with the fans:
– Our players have already heard some strong words in the locker room, but I really can’t blame the fans. I fully understand that someone is spending their time, traveling many kilometers, and expecting better performance from us. What I and the players can do is look to the future, focus on the next training session, and try to regain the trust, which is definitely quite low at the moment. It seems to me that sometimes a shock is needed, and we need to hear things about ourselves in order to possibly get moving.
About maturing to the Ekstraklasa:
– We have 17 rounds behind us. I won’t hide the fact that we are in a place where no one wanted to be, and I also think that no one, not even the biggest pessimists, thought we would be here. But this is the reality, and we have to adjust to it.
About the position of right-back:
– The idea was to congest the midfield, as we would then have three central defenders. We had two central midfielders and one central midfielder higher up in the form of Anton Tsarenko, along with two forwards. We wanted to congest the midfield because we knew that the GKS Katowice team particularly plays to the number tens, to Adrian Błąd or to Maka, or whoever else plays there. What happened was that Trepka or Milewski, when they dropped deeper, were stretching us too much, and the flanks were exposed. That’s why we later decided to change our formation from 5-2-1-2 to 5-4-1 and then to a higher 3-4-3, so we adjusted our structure to match the opponent’s structure.
