Ivan Leko undoubtedly had a different vision for the beginning of 2019. The Croatian saw his team struggle against the visiting defense and suffer an unfortunate 0-1 defeat.
"Congratulations to Charleroi, who won a tough match. However, I am disappointed with what we showed today. After two weeks of hard work, we wanted to do everything to win our first match of 2019, but we didn't succeed. This defeat hits hard. The players wanted to do too much individually and didn't play collectively enough. After the break, we improved and had about five clear chances, but if you don't score, you can't win."
Due to this defeat, the gap to leader Genk extends to ten points. "That's correct, but we're not going to start calculating now. We didn't do that last year when we were ahead, and we're not doing it this year now that we're behind. We need to focus on ourselves and not look at other teams. We have a lot of respect for the other teams, but we need to primarily look in the mirror and analyze what we need to do. The key is to return to basics and play more collectively. There was not enough freshness and creativity upfront today. It was certainly not a matter of quality because we have enough quality to beat everyone in Belgium. But there need to be nine players performing at their best to win, while today four or five didn't reach their level." (SF)
