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Philippe Clement: "Efficiency has to go back up"

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Philippe Clement was satisfied with the three points against Cercle, but the coach regretted that the efficiency of last weekend against Zulte Waregem was missing in this derby.

"First of all, I thought that kickoff with Miguel Van Damme was a very emotional moment. It's nice that at such a moment the competition between Club and Cercle is transcended by things that are more important. As for our first half, I thought we should have scored more goals. It should have been more than 1-0 at halftime. And then you don't come out of the locker room well when you get a goal against within the minute. On the one hand by the way we defended at that stage, on the other by Cercle playing it off very well. After that, I saw my team nervous for 15 minutes. Too little quality on the ball. The last half hour was better. Then we came back to chances, but then we didn't score that third goal. And then it's always exciting because one counter-action can cause you to lose two points. That's annoying. The efficiency has to go back up. Last week it was very good, today it wasn't. That's also part of soccer and it can't be like that every week. We have to finish that match faster, that's very important."

In any case, it was a hard-fought win for Blauw-Zwart. "A big compliment to Cercle. I've seen their six games: they play good soccer. They're never going to be in trouble this season. And they're going to give a lot of teams a lot of trouble. You can clearly see the hand of the coach, how he wants to play soccer. They execute well and have some quality players. This is the best Cercle I've seen in a very long time. To their credit, we had to fight hard for it." (KN)