Philippe Clement: "I can't explain this to my players"

Philippe Clement saw that his team was on its way to a sixth consecutive victory against Standard and was therefore hugely disappointed by the late debatable penalty.

"I'm going to talk about soccer first. That remains the easiest. I don't like to talk about other things, but later I will have to. It was a good match between two teams who went for it in full. Congratulations to Standard. They have a strong team and will fight for the title until the end. The match went well up and down, with a lot of pressing that made the teams give each other a hard time. Before halftime, we sometimes took too many risks in our playoffs, but we corrected that at halftime. We also took the lead and had two to three more chances to score the 0-2. Unfortunately, they scored the 1-1. Getting a point at Standard is good, but winning is super and that was in the cards."

"Now, however, I have to go to the other aspect. It is very difficult to win against an opponent like Standard when you get two penalties. In the first one, the ball is gone and Vanheusden himself looks for the contact with his leg. The second one is a very big difficulty for me. I hope someone can explain to me why a penalty can be whistled for that according to the rules that are properly explained to us every year. In any case, I can't explain it to my players. When in doubt, you let VAR look. Then the footage was still reviewed and it was still decided that it was penalty. Although even the linesman said it wasn't a penalty. I don't understand it very well."

The Bruges coach also explained some substitutions. "Deli had twisted his knee, but I have no idea how bad the injury is. We will have to see that in the coming days. The substitution of Dennis was tactical. We wanted to bring something extra in the second half with Noa Lang and we succeeded. He brought what I asked of him. We got him because he fits our system perfectly. You saw that immediately. It is not easy to come into a new group and be there after only two training sessions. But he immediately showed his qualities on a few occasions. Unfortunately that was not crowned with a goal." (SF)