Marcelino praised his Villarreal players for achieving “what we wanted” after Thursday’s 1-0 win against Rapid Vienna in the Europa League.
Bruno Soriano’s lone finish fired the Yellow Submarine into the competition’s knockout stages, and the Coach was pleased with the manner in which his side got the job done in light of what lay ahead.
“This is what we wanted, to get to the final matchday with our fate in our hands,” he said after the game.
“We have achieved this and now we’ll spend the next fortnight focusing on other things.
“We’ll go to Plzen with the intention of winning and finishing top of the group.
“We started the game well. We pressed very high and put in a big physical effort.
“After the first 25 minutes, however, we weren’t effective in the first line of pressure and our opponents forced us into doing lots of backwards running. That disrupted us, both in defence and attack.
“We started the second half and, although we lost a few balls in midfield, we recovered them quickly.
“That was key to us creating chances and I think we were deserving of victory.
“A perfect 90 minutes is within the reach of only very few teams, or it happens when one team are far superior to the other.
“We were all very happy [with Bruno’s goal] because we took the lead and that’s what we wanted. We went ahead and that opened up the game.”
