– In the first half, what happened was what we expected: City possessed the ball, tried to tear apart our defense. We couldn’t do much against him, but we held our own, we didn’t allow the opponent many chances, but he still took the lead. I don’t know what happened with the goal, how the ball got past Josko Guardiolo, but regardless of the fact that we were at a disadvantage, I felt that we were together. We came out in the second half as we should have done in the first half. We had more of the ball, we played more dangerously, we created situations and scored a goal – declared Dominik Szoboszlai.
In the first half of the meeting, Manchester City had seventy-four percent of the ball, and Szoboszlai explained why he thought this happened:
– It’s a fact that soccer is played with a ball, and I hate it when you have to constantly run after it, but sometimes you have to. We knew that this was what was waiting for us in this match, the mistake we made was that we backed off too much in the first half. So the solution was given: we had to go higher, as we did in the second half, but we always learn from our mistakes, and we draw the right conclusions from this match as well.
Szoboszlai didn’t tell him, but Rose did
By the second half, the picture of the game had changed, so the question arose: what did Marco Rose say during the break, with which he succeeded in rousing the team? However, Szoboszlai gave a strange answer to this: – I can’t tell you exactly, but… He asked us to get together, because it’s not a training match, but the Champions League round of 16.
But it was no secret what exactly was said in the dressing room, because head coach Marco Rose revealed it at the press conference after the match.
– First I spoke softly, then louder, then softly again, and finally I let my voice out. We had no game in the first half, we did not perform worthy of a team in the Champions League. Twenty-six percent possession against Manchester City is not enough. We had no punching power, we were completely passive. After the break, that thankfully changed, better late than never. Everyone could see that when we have the ball, we are a completely different team, capable of causing problems for opponents of any level. A draw is not a bad result at all, we travel to Manchester with high hopes. The most important task is to show once again: we can play football.
