Patrick Vieira gave his take on his side’s heavy defeat in Leverkusen on Thursday in the Group Stage of the Europa League (6-2).

Press conference:

Coach, how would you explain the fact that your side fell to such a heavy defeat?

In the first half, the first 15 minutes were tough. At 2-0, we continued to play and managed to get it back to 2-1. The start of the second half was interesting, we pushed, tried to cause them problems but the third goal hurt us psychologically and destabilised us slightly. From that moment on, we left a lot of spaces between the lines and they caused us problems with their aggressiveness and the the quality that they have when they attack deep. These are the sort of details that make the difference but it’s true that this evening, we came up against a better side than us, even though the scoreline was very harsh.

You used various systems this evening, what did you make of them?

I found that in the 4-3-3, we were a lot better defensively. In the 4-4-2 , they caused us problems when they dictated the game and the rhythm of the team. Our downfall was leaving the spaces between the lines.

Like at Saint-Etienne on Sunday, the third goal came from a mistake playing out from the back…

It’s not Walter or Morgan’s fault for the third goal. I will say it again, Walter is one of the best goalkeepers in France. We try to play out from the back, it’s the philosophy that we want to put in place and from the moment that you take risks, you will make mistakes, be that, Walter, Dante or another player. We need to avoid them. The opposition’s press was good and what we need to take away from the match is the intensity that this team (Leverkusen) is able to bring. We need to learn from that in order to compete against the top sides. They caused us lots of problems with their change of rhythm and the way they closed things up to stop us from playing.

Hapoël Beer-Sheva, Nice’s next opposition (on Thursday at 9pm), beat Slavia Prague (3-1) this evening. We get the feeling that there’s no established hierarchy in the group.

When you lose your first match, you need to bounce back quickly. It’s important to digest this result and to recover as soon as possible because we have an important match on Sunday against Lille (5pm) and then we will think about this next Europa League match.

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