Millonarios has the same points as the leader, but the goal difference sends him to second place. The blues were able to reach the top this Sunday, but they couldn’t defeat Deportes Tolima, who extended their positive streak against the ambassadors: it’s been five years without losing.
Despite not being able to beat Tolima, Alberto Gamero, the Millonarios coach, was satisfied with his team’s performance and is now getting ready, if public order circumstances allow, to travel to Montería to play against Jaguares. These are his reflections on the match, at a press conference.
Gamero was calm with the performance of Millos
The negative streak against Tolima. “We had said in the talk that this match could end 1-0 winning Millonarios, 0-0, 1-1 or 0-1 winning Tolima. It was going to be very close. Today we face the two teams with the fewest goals. We try to elaborate and so do they, but in their field. We had the initiative from the right, from the left, the center, walls. I’m not going to say that they were the clearest options, but they were the clearest approaches to be able to score. It leaves me calm that we are facing a good team and Millonarios showed that it is too. We are on par with those games with young players, grassroots players. I wanted to win to go to first place, but we have to give him credit for coming and standing up well”.
(Also read: Luis Díaz scores a goal and Klopp goes crazy: see his celebration in Liverpool)
The attitude of Millionaires. “This is a team that goes out looking, proactive, looking for the rival goal. Today Bertel had a goal option, Rosales went out to shoot crosses. Even though they had supremely fast wingers and we still went out. In the second half we almost played from midfield to the rival goal. We never lost faith, so much so that we ended up playing with two strikers thinking that Tolima did the same. I saw that the filter was lost in the middle of the field for both teams, but we had the advantage of playing in the opposite field and we sent crosses from the sides. I decided to play with Márquez and Valencia at the top. We wanted to win the match, but they were a strong rival that is representing us well in the Copa Libertadores. I like that the team brought out the caste and behaved up to the task, even though they didn’t win. We have another home game left to score points and stay in first place”.
Do you travel to Montería to play for the Cup? “I asked just now and he tells me that until now he is standing. We travel to Montería on Tuesday and go look for that classification (N. de la R.: Millonarios is up 3-0 in the series against Jaguares).
No creatives in the last few minutes. “We had both variants: midfielders-midfielders 10 and forward, we ended up with forwards. In football, not only do you need midfielders to reach 10, today we had two midfielders who filtered many balls and reached the area; We had a Gómez who took the ball 2-3 times to the forwards and a 10-sectored midfielder like Cortés; two full-backs who were normally coming out. When I play the two strikers, Tolima does the same to me and we saw that in the middle both Pereira and Larry had no one to score and could elaborate. We looked for alternatives, we didn’t stay with our arms crossed thinking about the draw, although it served us because it helped us score, we wanted to win and that’s why we ended up like this”.
The absence of Steven Vega. “We have the start of the game not only with Larry and Pereira but with our center backs. I’ve always said that I don’t want a pretty start to the game but a progressive one, two or three touches and we skip lines. I don’t like my team in that safety zone of 4-5 five passes. Sometimes they have, sometimes they haven’t, but I don’t like it. The idea is that the rival presses us and we jump that line. With Larry-Pereira we have had that possibility that one enters the middle of the central defenders to come out playing. The games go by and I see that they understand each other better. We are hopeful that in these finals the two of them will have more games”.
The medical situation of Mackalister Silva and Daniel Ruiz
Why was Mackalister Siva not there. “Today (Sunday) an MRI was done and it doesn’t have much. What he does have is a little shadow there on his thigh. We have this week to see how it evolves and see what to do with it.”
(In other news: Luis Díaz: harsh criticism of Salah for ‘denying’ him this ‘pasegol’ in Liverpool)
What happened to Daniel Ruiz? “It was a cramp, that’s what the doctor told me. Tiredness. It seems to me that she ran sometimes more than necessary, but she did it, she fought and she did interesting things. We will wait until tomorrow for him to be checked in the medical department and sent for training. I think that both he and Macka are not serious.
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