A narrow success but an important success. Winner of Auxerre this Friday evening (1-0), PSG has temporarily regained the lead in Ligue 1 and now has a two-point lead over Racing Club de Lens. The Parisians’ performance was sluggish for a long time until Bradley Barcola opened the score at the end of the match. In the post-match press conference, Luis Enrique admitted that his team’s lack of realism worried him but he savored this victory which gave his team confidence.
Is this a liberating success for your team?
LUIS HENRY. I think it’s very clear, it’s a special moment because we had played three days before in Portugal. We had the opportunity to put pressure on Lens and that’s the main thing today. It was difficult to play today. We created chances but we lacked the confidence and precision to finish the chances. The match was complicated and when we scored this goal, it was very important for us.
How do you explain this lack of confidence in front of goal?
When you do better things than the opponent but you are not able to win, as was the case in Portugal, it means that you have less confidence. During the first 15 minutes, we created chances, but we missed, they defended well. We must continue, we must work. We need to improve this because the key moment of the season arrives in the Champions League and we need to put Lens under pressure.
“Wednesday, at the Park, we are going to have a very good match”
Barcola illustrated this lack of precision. Can this goal start his season?
I wasn’t targeting anyone. Today Bradley was very good. He created superiority, he created chances, he had the opportunity to score. It’s hard to be precise. This is not a problem specific to the attackers, the midfielders also had opportunities. This is a moment where we are imprecise, we have to change that and work to be as precise as possible for the next match.
Were you worried?
Of course, every time you see players who are not precise and you lose balls that you are not used to losing, it makes things more difficult in the match. You start to see that confidence is diminishing. If we had had as much bad luck as in Portugal, we could have lost this match!
How will you work to remedy this problem?
I think it’s not a technical gesture, it’s above all a question of trust. And trust isn’t something you can buy. Confidence comes when you see that you are capable of completing actions. We have quality in training. Players are not machines. This evening, we were not precise in circulating the ball. We can change that because everyone knows the individual quality of our players.
Are you confident for Wednesday’s match against Newcastle?
The team has the experience of playing important matches, which they have shown over the last two seasons. I am confident for Wednesday, at the Parc, we will have a very good match, try to dominate and win.
