Last month Club won 0-4 in Porto, but on their own field Blauw-Zwart went down with the same figures. Carl Hoefkens was disappointed with his team's performance, but above all wants to learn lessons from it.
"I was very curious about the next steps my players could take, but this was a very good lesson. When an opponent comes here with high intensity, aggressiveness and coupled with quality, you know it's going to be tough. Still, we should be able to do more in return. Porto did show that they can be an absolute top team. The goals against were absolutely avoidable. I feel bad about the first goal and Brandon feels bad about that too. But I am very happy with how Brandon is playing this season. Everyone is entitled to an offday, it's no different with Brandon. These are incredible learning moments, as long as you learn lessons from them. It was a game at the very highest level. We put ourselves in a situation that was fantastic, which meant they absolutely had to win. The way we handled it in the first half was not wrong. But after halftime, that penalty phase and then the 0-2 was the key moment. At those moments the absolute qualities come out and also the shortcomings and you can learn a lot of lessons from that as a coach."
Next week in Leverkusen follows another chance to still claim the group win. "There will be a number of players suspended, so it's up to the other players to show themselves. Just like in the other matches, we want to show our soccer there and go for a win there. We always have to live up to the absolute basics of our principles anyway. Today there was maybe just a little less than one hundred percent intensity, maybe that's because we were already qualified. We have to address that with the whole group. In any case, my players have not bumped up to their limits, they proved that during the previous games. I also don't want the players to think to where their limits are, I just want them to always go full out. This match has exposed some lesser things and we now have to work on that and learn the necessary lessons." (SF)