Gennaro Gattuso (OM coach, held to a 2-2 draw by Brighton): “We should have run 90 minutes, we should have continued to do what we had done well for 65 minutes, before the changes. From there, we had bad pressing, bad races. Those who entered had to be more attentive, although I am not saying that the draw is the fault of the entrants. But it’s difficult to stop Brighton if you press badly. And then on a physical level, without making any controversy because I have a lot of respect for Marcelino, I believe that to play the way I want, we only have 60 or 65 minutes in our legs. We need to improve that. We’re doing new things, it takes a little time, it can’t be done in a week.
I keep in mind what I saw, the performance, but that’s not enough. We have to work, understand what we want to do. And if we can be a little better physically, with the qualities we have, we can do a good job. The only thing I want to say about fitness is that my players have to do different races. It’s a different type of race. (…) I don’t like talking about referees, it’s a difficult job. But I just want to know what they were doing at VAR. They saw the tackle on Harit, there was blood. It was an error by the VAR, not the referee. Against Brighton you can’t wait with two lines of four and make the sign of the cross and hope it passes. We put them in difficulty for an hour and tactically we could have done it again for the last half hour. But we weren’t good at that. With Veretout, we lost a player who played very well. He will be absent in Le Havre but then there is the truce. We hope it won’t be too serious.”
Comments collected at a press conference
