Pepe Mel has confirmed that Rafael van der Vaart suffered a muscle injury on his Real Betis debut, a 2-1 defeat to Deportivo La Coruna.
The summer arrival from Hamburg came off worse for wear in a collision with teammate Ruben Castro just after the restart at Benito Villamarin as he fell to the ground holding his calf in some distress and subsequently asked to be replaced.
“Nothing went well for us,” the Coach said after the game, in which goals from Fede Cartabia and Faycal Fajr downed the Andalucians, despite Petros’ equaliser.
“We lacked movement in attack and did the opposite of what we did in other matches.
“The fans demand the players to return their support, but we didn’t play with the aggressiveness we showed in previous matches.
“We played at a slow pace, which wasn’t enough to beat a top team, and then conceded two goals in the second half, which killed us.
“[Van der Vaart] has a muscular problem. We played on Friday and will do so again on Sunday morning, so we had to rotate.
“We have to think about the match in Gijon, so it was time to start Rafa. We missed Dani [Ceballos] and [Fernando] Portillo, but all the teams in La Liga have had to do the same.
“We play on Sunday morning, so we had to refresh the team.
“It was a surprise that neither Ruben [Castro] nor Jorge [Molina] did what I asked of them, but they’re entitled to have a bad day.
“Now we have to think about Gijon and draw the appropriate conclusions [from the match against Depor].”
