Warta Poznań won 2:1 against Widzew Łódź in Sunday’s match of the 31st round of the PKO Bank Polski Ekstraklasa played at the Respect Energy Stadium in Grodzisk Wielkopolski. Read what the coaches of both teams said after the match:
Daniel Myśliwiec, coach of Widzew Łódź: – The rating of the match will not be good. The key message before this meeting was that the chaos on which Warta is based must be brought under control. Not in a negative context, but as a result of strong counter-pressing and playing a long ball. This is where Warta effectively looks for its chances. Throughout the match, we had to try to control the chaos, but it is difficult to control it by creating it in your own ranks. I think this is the biggest reason for today’s defeat.
The beginning of the match was very unfavorable, but the first half looked acceptable. The goal we scored gave us an optimistic attitude before the second half. I was convinced that by remaining calm I would be able to make up for the unfavorable result. I was wrong. We were unable to organize the game despite few chances from the opponent. Unfortunately, it reflects how we performed today, because we can do better.
Dawid Szulczek, coach of Warta Poznań: – We know that matches against Widzew are difficult. This team has quality in playing positional attacks. We were aware that pressing would cost us a lot of energy, but drawing conclusions from the match against Łódź, we wanted to distance our opponent from our own goal, and we succeeded for most of the match. We were prepared to play longer passes and use pressing jumps. We started the match with good energy and – just like in the match against Raków Częstochowa – we struck twice before the opponent could show his quality. I’m glad we didn’t get pushed back in the second half, because there were moments like that. Especially since we had to make changes, but the substitutes did a lot of good things today.
Recently, we haven’t been scoring much when away, but we have been scoring a lot at home. Everything evens out. In home matches, we returned to what Warta was famous for in defense. We try to be careful and focus on the long ball. This is our identity. There are teams that are characterized by positional attacks, and there are those that rely on set pieces. And they are just like us. Sometimes people in the football community expect us to change our style, but if it doesn’t bring results, we should do what gives us points. It’s nice that football has different dimensions. I am the kind of trainer who likes to take from what is good. There is great energy in Warta and I don’t think I have worked with another team that had such a locker room. This is something special. I continue the things that coach Piotr Tworek introduced and it brings results. We still have to take one more step to sustain ourselves and I hope we will do it soon.
