Patrick Vieira looked back over his side’s defeat against Salzburg (4-1), which brought to an end Le Gym’s training camp in Austria. Le Gym’s Coach focused on the lack of freshness of Les Rouge et Noir after an intense week of work.  

What will you take away from this heavy defeat? 

We will take a lot away from it, friendlies are made to test certain things that we would like to put in place. This match teaches us a lot on the physical aspects of the game, we have had a tough week of work and this afternoon, we lacked freshness but it’s good to see the team in difficulty in these areas.

You played against a side that is used to European football this afternoon, perhaps the strongest that you have faced in pre-season?

The closer we get to the league starting, the more we need to test ourselves against big sides. Salzburg are a side with lots of experience and one that is used to playing European matches. For us, it was a good test and we will take a lot from it. We put in a good performance in our previous match (6-0 victory against FC Dac on 1 August) and today, there were some things that were less good, but I expected the team to lack freshness, and they did. There were also interesting things, we saw our deficiencies and will continue to work on them.

Which deficiencies are you thinking of?

We lacked freshness physically in order to be able to get in behind and to be able to move the ball around more quickly. We made quite a few bad choices due to the physical condition of the players and the work we have put in this week. These matches will help us to grow and improve.

How do you explain the down period in the second half?

Once again, it’s down to the week we have just had and the physical condition of the players.  We also need to relook at the way we start halves, we need to be psychologically ready to challenge agressive teams like this. We have good bases to build on and good things to analyse and then continue to work and progress. 

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