Shakhtar Donetsk head coach Marino Pušić commented on his side's 1-3 defeat to French side Marseille in the return leg of the Europa League play-offs for the right to reach the last 16 of the tournament, which took place yesterday at the Provencal team's ground. It will be recalled that the Shakhtar Donetsk dropped out of the tournament on the basis of the sum of two meetings (2:2, 1:3).
"Firstly, I want to congratulate the opponent because they deserved to win. At the same time, we started the match very well, controlled the game, created chances, scored a goal - we were on the right track to a positive result. And up to a certain point, everything was going quite well for us, which is not easy with such an opponent who has a lot of individual qualities, physical strength and the support of the fans at the stadium.
As a team, we played well for the first 20-25 minutes, but unfortunately we made a mistake and the opponent immediately took advantage of it with good transitions, and after that the energy of the game changed, we could no longer show our game, which upset me a little bit. But okay, I can understand it, because it's not easy to get back into the game after that.
In general, we started the second half with a score of 1:1 - it's still a result, it's still a game. And even at the beginning of the second half, we had good possession of the ball. "Marseille were quite adventurous, with the long ball and the second goal, the physical aspects and so on. In fact, I don't know if we had many scoring opportunities, in fact, no, but the same goes for the opponent: the fight lasted the whole game until we made another mistake and they scored to make it 1-2.
And you know, at that moment we wanted to change something, we were ready for it, but immediately after that we conceded the third goal - out of nothing, also because of a mistake. So football is a game that depends on mistakes. Unfortunately, we made them three times, which is too much with such an opponent, in such a stadium. In general, I think Marseille deserved this victory. It's unfortunate for us because we started this game perfectly, as I said before - you can't start an away match with Marseille in a better way. But this is football: those who make fewer mistakes will probably have a better result. And that's what happened," Pušić said at a press conference after the Marseille match.