Christos Tzolis: "Everyone craves that second star"
Christos Tzolis was once again golden for Blauw-Zwart. The Greek first served Lorenzo Tresoldi and then also gave the assist for Carlos Forbs. His election as Man of the Match was therefore very logical.
"I am very happy to help my team. I am an attacking player, so I always try to create goals or score myself. But I'm especially happy that I can help the team and that we have three points again. I am also very satisfied with the performance of the whole team. Whether I still have room to put all those trophies? I live alone in an apartment in Knokke, but my mom is currently in Belgium. She can help find a place for this trophy."
Christos Tzolis, meanwhile, keeps scoring goals and providing assists, making it seem as if he has outgrown the Belgian league.
"I'm not thinking about the future right now. First and foremost, I want to play champion with Club Brugge. I've never won a title before, so it would be the first time in my career. Everyone craves that second star, so that's a big challenge. Now three more matches for Club Brugge, then the national team and vacations. I still have a contract here anyway and am very happy here.
Whether I will celebrate this victory with an ouzo? No, but maybe with a glass of white wine. (laughs)"
Ivan Leko: "A lot of energy and quality on the ball"
Ivan Leko was obviously very happy with the victory and his team's performance. "You knew beforehand that it was a match between two teams that like to attack. STVV also started well, with a lot of movement, so it wasn't easy for us. But when I see the effort and the quality of my team, it's very good.
We brought a lot of energy and quality to the ball, showed stability, put a lot of pressure and didn't give them time to play soccer. That seems super offensive and risky, but it's not. When all the players go full steam ahead, that's hard to stop. The only downside is that we didn't score enough. It really should have been 5 or 6-0."
Thanks to this victory, Blauw-Zwart increases its lead over Union SG to four points for now.
"A month ago everyone would have signed to be in the lead at this point. We can now enjoy this victory for a while, but from tomorrow it's full focus on next Sunday.
It's a match that will possibly decide the title, so it's an absolute final. We're playing at home and we know it's always special here at Jan Breydel Stadium. On a good pitch, with the fans behind us, we will do everything we can to win. That would be great, but if Union SG wins, I will be the first to congratulate them.
Whether it is an advantage for us that they are still playing the cup final on Thursday? No, I don't think so. It's such an important match that the focus is automatically there. Then you don't feel that in the legs."
Hugo Siquet: "Today we were very close to the perfect performance"
Defender Hugo Siquet was very satisfied with the performance. "It was a very good performance by the team: a clean sheet against a very good team. It is a team against which it is difficult to defend because they move a lot up front. Today we were very close to the perfect performance, except for a few details.
Against a strong team we hardly gave anything away. In the end we took the victory and kept the score zero, which only strengthened our confidence. We created a lot of chances, but we also missed some. That is something we have to continue to train on. We still have the best attack in the league, but if we score faster today, we will kill the game off much sooner.
We still have three finals to go. We will do everything we can to win those matches, but first we will focus completely on the next match. That's a hugely important match. Tomorrow is a day to recuperate."
Brandon Mechele: "We win 2-0 and keep the zero, that gives extra confidence."
Despite STVV being a very difficult team to defend against, Blauw-Zwart was still able to keep the zero. "It was a very good match today. It wasn't perfect, because the score would have been even higher. We won 2-0 and kept the zero, which of course gives extra confidence.
We tried to be man-to-man and follow them, but they move around a lot. Sometimes it was just a physical battle, and in those moments you just have to try to stay with your man. There was very little margin for error today: if you don't follow your man once, there's little backup to correct it. Defensively we were very good. I even think we gave away fewer chances against eleven men than against ten. That might be something to work on, but we played a good game and can go into the next match with a positive feeling.
We made some very nice moves today. Then maybe it's unfortunate that we didn't reward ourselves every time, but we did score two goals. Maybe we save the rest for next time. We win 2-0 and in the end that is the most important thing. We knew that STVV is one of the best footballing teams in the league, so we certainly didn't underestimate them. We did our job and we are satisfied.
At the moment, we are mainly concerned with ourselves: we are first and there is no team left between us and the championship, except ourselves. So we just have to keep doing our thing, keep winning the matches and not look at others. Next week is a very important match, but after that there are two more. We have to look from match to match, and for now we are doing very well. We have won six out of seven matches. Let's hope we can continue doing that."