In his press conference, Lucien Favre didn’t hide his disappointment after his side’s elimination against AS Monaco, after they had dominated the large part of the game.

Coach, your side’s solid performance must still frustrate you, with an elimination at the end of it.

It was a good match from us. Looking at the game, we could have won it, or taken it to penalties. We had chances to come back into it. We shouldn’t, unfortunately, concede the goals that we conceded, it was too easy. Monaco are a very effective side, especially from crosses.

What did you say to the players after the game?

The players have seen for themselves that they played well. But we can’t kid ourselves, Monaco are a side who leave you the space to play, it is one of the reasons that we had 70% of possession. Now, we need to get going again for the league, this evening it’s a bit difficult to take because there was enough there to get through.

What were you missing?

There is some work to be done on the small tactical details. As well as in the final product, the final decisions, precision in our crosses, our runs etc. Our two wingers are 20 years old, we forget that a bit.

Jardim said that they left you the ball deliberately so that they couldn’t be hit on the break in the same way as they were in the league, what do you think about that?

Mmmh… we played our game, we knew what to expect. We succeeded in finding the spaces but we lacked that accuracy in the details. We need to improve that, but it’s promising. But we need to be careful, it’s not because we played well against Monaco that the rest will be easy.

The absence of Balotelli, did that make a difference?

Mario, when there is a chance in the box, he is there. As a team, everyone defended well. Everybody wanted the ball, without exception, in the movement, that’s why we had a lot of possession. I am not sure if Mario will be there on Saturday, it has been three days that he has been unable to train.

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