OM are still “a team under construction” but have no choice but to “be ready”, their coach Marcelino said on Tuesday, on the eve of the third preliminary round of the Champions League which will oppose their team at Panathinaikos on Wednesday in Athens. “We have to be ready. We are a team under construction and this is not the best time. If I could choose, I wouldn’t play this match right away (smile). But we know from the start that it will be like that,” Marcelino said at a press conference.
Third in the last French championship, OM must go through this preliminary round against Panathinaikos then through a possible play-off against the Portuguese of Braga or the Serbs of Backa Topola to be able to play the group stage of the C1. “Before signing, I knew that there would be this game on August 8 or 9 and that it would take two rounds. It is therefore not an additional pressure”, he added, before acknowledging that the qualification for the hens was “very, very important” for OM.
Marcelino joined OM in early July, after the departure of the previous coach, Croatian Igor Tudor. So he only had a little over a month to get his ideas across and install a new game system. “We tried to speed up the adaptation process. That of the staff to the players and that of the players to the staff. I am very satisfied with what we showed last week against Bayer Leverkusen (2-1 defeat, editor’s note), which is a team that is already built. It makes me optimistic for tomorrow,” explained the Spanish technician.
