In the second half it seemed to be a more ‘Benfica’ style. Was it necessary to rescue this version during the break? “That’s exactly what happened. We rescued ourselves. The last 25 minutes of the first half were not at our level. We had a good start in the game, in command. A good move gives the first goal down the right aisle, with the support of Manu, in a very good situation from our team. The game was controlled more carefully with the ball. We could lose some balls to the opponent and we lost without the opponent forcing it. That’s what we said at half-time. Whoever entered the game couldn’t let it go. We have to have control of the game with the ball. We tried to force it and we weren’t very objective, we needed to move from one side to the other. In the second half, with a strong attack, we scored again early and we controlled it clearly, because we were the better team.
There are 53 goals in 27 games. What does this say about your work? “Above all, we’re looking for that. We have a clear identity, we’re not always going to win this way, but today the superiority was clear. We have to try to materialize that on the pitch. It’s good for the players to feel that, but there are times when it’s important not to concede a goal. But it’s important to see good goals and scoring four goals away from home is important.”
We saw Marco talking to Manu Silva at the bank. Is it something that is part of his intelligence? “I spoke about this before the game. Manu has a very good knowledge of the game, he likes to analyze, understand what is asked and analyze it on the field. He realized that the opponent was doing different things to what we prepared and was giving that feedback. I think it is important to have that ability in position 6.”
It is increasingly clear that one of the first eight places will go to Benfica… “That’s our objective. We already have a very high density of games and we clearly want to avoid that (the play-off). It’s a clear objective of ours, we have to continue fighting for it. It’s important to have won three in three games, now we hope to be able to recover the players for Monday.”
