This match, Athletic Bilbao against Deportivo La Coruna was a very particular match because
it had been years without a win away for Deportivo. It was a difficult season. We had our first
win after eight matches against Malaga at home the week before. Now, we wanted to push
and have that continuity in terms of results. Going to Bilbao is always tough. The environment
and the identity of this team has always been a factor - a psychological factor when I played
with Real Madrid there as a player, we always knew we would go back home with some broken
bones. It was like a war zone. Bilbao were playing with their quite consolidated 4-2-3-1:
four defenders here, two midfielders, Garcia the main player and Williams - a very fast,
young striker - and then on the sides, their other players were Susaeta and Cordoba. Bilbao
are a team which play quite direct football so the player in front of our defence, Mosquera,
had an important role to make sure he would double in the case of long balls, especially
when Garcia would go up to make sure we have coverage for the ball which eventually falls
in behind our defence. With the ball, which was very important for me to express to the
team to kill it a little bit by having good ball possession and therefore we asked Ruben
Martinez to start the build-up from the back as much as possible, as fast as possible.
We had, in the middle, two players who were quite good passers - Schar and Albentosa.
On the right we had Juanfran who I will come back to because he had quite an important
role in this match and Luisinho on the left. These players needed to have the personality
to break the spirit of the pressure that we were expecting from Bilbao and I have to say,
they did it quite well in the match. Mosquera had the quality to be in the spider in the
web in that first phase of the field. I like to divide into phase one, phase two and phase
three - zone one, two and three where all the players know, more of less, where we need
to defend and where we need to make pressure. Then, as the midfielders, we had Borges and
Michael Krohn-Dehli who also had a very fundamental task in the game. Michael (Krohn-Dehli) more
as a playmaker, and Borges more as a player who would be the surprising factor getting
into the opposition box of the adversary and this is how we scored our second goal if I am correct. We
wanted to use Juanfran lots to push on the wing - this guy could run for 90 minutes going
up and down on the sides. Having Colak, who played in behind the striker, who would also
create a triangle with Juanfran and Michael Krohn-Dehli. I asked our striker to stay as
much as possible in the middle but would go and help if needed on the sides as well. We
wanted to occupy the opposition box of the adversary with our two strikers. We created a few opportunities
to put the ball into the box with the surprise factor because Bilbao liked to double - even
in the box, they got a few goals against them that season - so, that was actually the situation
I wanted to create, where the right-back would be occupying himself by helping the other
defenders and then having Borges coming in as a surprise factor.
One of our goals, I think the second one, we created the overlap which
is something I really like to see. Then, Perez came back with the ball, put it into the back
post, where the ball was headed back in and we had Adrian who scored the second goal.
You say you plan things.This isn't about planning things - you cannot plan these things out
- you can create the conditions for the players and ask them to play to their qualities and
his quality was definitely coming into the box lot of times. We could have used him more
during the match; we could have used the quality of Juanfran to come up and give Krohn-Dehli
the possibility to get the ball more to his feet and to use his passing qualities. Colak:
give him the freedom to move around and to be in between the lines and to create problems
for the adversary and to be very aggressive. We were talking about this situation here
- my defenders had to be very high. So, this gave us the possibility to be very aggressive
when we lost the ball eventually in the last zone of the field. This had given us the 1-0
and the 2-0 in the first half. I said in the first 20 minutes, they're going to come for
us but we need to go for them. That was very well implemented by the team, the spirit was
there. Second half, Adrian - who scored twice - had a big ankle in the dressing room and
we had to sub him for Borja. The other thing I like to do is to prepare my substitutions,
mainly upfront. I like my substitutions to come in and to continue the spirit of the
team to attack and to score goals which is the best way to defend in my philosophy rather
than adapt and sit back and then leave the ball in the adversary and calling them to
your goal. One thing I did do in the second half is we - instead of playing with a diamond
- started playing to defend better and to also have the possibility to counter-attack.
I pushed, on the sides, Krohn-Dehli and Perez. So, we practically had the same system as
Bilbao and we could more easily defend their pressure. They were pressing a lot in the
second half. We were a little bit more solid.
Then we scored to make it 3-1 which came from
the pressure of Borja who came in for Adrian. Pressure from transition of attack to defensive
when we then played vertical. We got the ball back, I think it was Perez being in this position.
We got the ball back in this area when Borja pressured the guy in midfield. I think it
was Borges who played the ball on the overload, Borja came into the box as the ball was played
at the near post and he scored to make it 3-1 which was very important at that point
in the match because we had a lot of pressure from Bilbao. And then they scored another
goal which was actually a free-kick for us but this was more or less the tactics which
were implemented during this match and it gave us the second victory in a row. From
that moment, everything was back to normal.