Philippe Clement: "This was unworthy of Club Brugge"

Club Brugge led 2-0 against KV Mechelen and seemed to be on their way to a smooth victory. Yet Blauw-Zwart gave up and had to settle for one point. Philippe Clement was furious afterwards and made no bones about it.

"In all my life I have never been so angry and disappointed. After all, it is unlikely that you give away a 2-0 lead. In the second half, we didn't win a single game. We were overrun and left too much space between the lines. I saw eleven islands on the field. I have no explanation for this. I felt it at the end of the first half and warned my players at halftime, but to no avail. When you play like that against Dortmund, you get nine or 10 in."

The Bruges coach did not take his players to task. "I think they should be happy that there were no fans in the stands. After all, this was unworthy of Club Brugge. I can't live with what I saw today. I never want to see this again. This is my seventeenth season at Club Brugge and I know very well what this club stands for. You can have an off-day, but not wetting your jersey and not fighting for it is much worse than having an off-day once. This has purely to do with mentality, not quality. No one has brought what I expected. There are no excuses for this. I expect a reaction against Dortmund anyway." (SF)