It is a hard European blow that has once again suffered Real Betison this occasion, in front of a Copenhagen who, after losing from the first half due to a great goal from Abde, managed to tie the score again through a penalty scored by Diks. Disgusted by this unexpected draw, as well as hopeful of finally achieving qualification in the UEFA Conference League, he was Manuel Pellegrini in the Benito Villamarín press room to analyze his team’s clash against the team from the Danish capital. «It was a hard-fought match, especially in possession of the ball, which they have a lot of. Once we had it, we tried to do damage, but we couldn’t score the second goal. It’s two points lost, but this is just beginning. There are four games left and we are going to achieve the goal of qualifying«, stated the technician first.
When asked what is happening to Betis in Europe, the Chilean responded that “we play with two important rivals in their leagues; one that beat us in a corner and this one, which tied us with a penalty. The objective is to qualify and I am sure that in the four remaining games we will achieve it,” he indicated again, before adding about his team’s performance against Copenhagen that “when we had the ball, we tried to push harder and reach the goal.” . I insist that We play against a team that handles the ball very well, against whom it is not easy to recover possessions«.
Bellerín’s penalty on Diks, which was later converted by the Copenhagen defender himself, was a key play in this clash about which Pellegrini said that “It was an involuntary action. Héctor did not see it and, unfortunately, he hit him in the area«. Another particular moment of the match was the change of Vitor Roque for Bakambu at half-time, the Betic coach justifying it with that »Cédric felt a contracture and we did not want to risk it for the second half. Stopping, I don’t think I’ll have any problems. I hope it will be there by Sunday.”
Despite falling tonight after the victory in Pamplona against Osasuna, which was preceded by a bad streak away against Legia de Warsaw and Sevilla, Pellegrini stated that he did not believe “in crises for one game or so.” We have to qualify. We would have liked to score more than one point out of six, but there are still twelve. “Once what happened happens, it remains only an anecdote.” In line with the route that remains in this league phase of the Conference League, in which Betis has four games left to play, Pellegrini made it clear that “I want to qualify. If we are among the top eight, better, but if we have to play an intermediate round, nothing happens.. If we qualify among the eight we will save a couple of games, but my goal is to qualify and I am sure that we are going to achieve it.”
Pellegrini was also asked about the system used, with two forwards, to which he said that “I don’t think the schemes are decisive. We have a lot of forwards, we were looking for a system that would allow us to have offensive creativity based on players who go into space. I do not believe that the system is the basis of the results, but the performance of the team. It hurts us a lot to lose two points, but if we qualified it wouldn’t be a disaster.” On the other hand, he did not want to look back on his team’s statistics in Europe, since »the important thing is to be involved in this season. We know what we have to do, get the classification. You can’t always get three points, although today we deserved them. Adrián did not have any shots on goal.”
Finally, emphasizing again that Betis did not enjoy possession in several parts of the match, Pellegrini commented that “they are a team that has a lot of possession, they are a big team in their league. They didn’t create any opportunities for us in the time they had them, but it is clear that, The more we have it, the more opportunities we have to reach the opponent’s goal.. We didn’t have a lot of arrivals, but we had the game where we wanted. Unfortunately, that penalty reversed the result.”
