National Athletic failed to turn the series around and ended up eliminated from the Copa Libertadores 2022 at the hands of Olympia from Paraguay. Hernan Dario Herrerahead coach spoke about the game.
“I want to apologize to the fans of Atlético Nacional, the directors and all those who are part of the institution for not achieving the objective of qualifying, but we fought until the end“, indicated the ‘Arriero’.
In addition, “playing the Copa Libertadores is difficult, Nacional brought the reinforcements that I think were good, they knew how to handle the result, they did not give us space, they had the score and managed to make the difference. If we go to both halves, in the first we had a lot of desire to win, but we were wrong. We competed in a different way and I think that was what we lacked in this game.”
Regarding the style of play that he tried to implement in the last training sessions, Herrera commented that “We worked with high pressure, the rival played long, we lacked that possession in the middle of the pitch. We expected more from the team, they struggled, we tried to do something else, the rival forced us to play something else and we lacked clarity in the game”.
Finally, the strategist spoke about the change of Daniel Mantilla and what he thought of the procedure in the game. “When a central defender sent me off, I had time to come back and I had to make a quick substitution, that’s why I decided to take out Daniel Mantilla. With the coaching staff, we studied an idea, with the goal we thought we were going to pass by. But they surpassed us in strength and how they stood behind“.
Juan Camilo Alvarez Serrano
FUTBOLRED Correspondent
Medellin
En Twitter: @juanchoserran8
