O Botafogo closed the season with a great victory over Fortaleza 4-2, he completed his tenth game undefeated, but his fifth in a row conceding two goals. The defensive issue was a topic at coach Davide Ancelotti’s press conference, who started by talking about what he wants from the black and white team under his command for next year.
– Botafogo has to be an offensive team. I think we always try to be a team that plays attacking, that wants to win. We don’t always succeed, of course. We had games where it was difficult for us to finish. But, in general, Botafogo has to be a team that attacks. And this will continue to be the same thing – said Davide.
The black and white coach then attributed the poor defensive performance to absences, but admitted that he should have given more opportunities to Gabriel Bahiawho started this Sunday in place of suspended David Ricardo.
– It is true that, in the defensive phase, in the last games, we conceded a lot of goals. It is also true that we did many. We had a lot of absences in defense, I think Kaio Fernando’s absence [Pantaleão] It was a very important absence, because he is a very fast player, who allows the defensive line to escape. But we have players like Marçal who scored five goals as a defender. Just thank them, thank Gabriel, who played a very good game today and there was no sequence in the game, I didn’t give him a chance, he probably deserved more. We had a lot of absences, changing the defense line a lot. It can always happen that players who don’t usually play together have more problems. I think this explains a little why we had defensive problems in the last few games. We also lost Alexander Barboza in the last few games and we were a little more exposed – he commented.
