Lille coach Bruno Genesio said he was “the first to blame” after the home defeat against PAOK Salonika, citing a “personal questioning”.
“I blame myself because my choices were not good this evening,” Genesio immediately said after this “big disappointment, big disillusionment” against the Greek club PAOK Salonika (4-3), Thursday evening in the Europa League,
For this meeting, the former Lyon coach decided to start several players accustomed to starting on the bench such as Tiago Santos, Calvin Verdonk, Ugo Raghouber, Osame Sahraoui and Hamza Igamane. Santos and Nathan Ngoy sank in the first half, too often guilty of the three goals scored by PAOK to the point of being replaced at half-time.
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“Sometimes, when there are a lot of changes at the start of a match, from one match to another, it can disturb the players,” Genesio explained. I take that for myself and I assume responsibility for it.”
The 59-year-old coach also criticized the first period of the Mastiffs, “unworthy of a team that wants to be ambitious in this competition”.
“Tonight we overused our values in the first half, the values of football and high-level sport are humility, commitment, motivation, aggressiveness,” he listed. Football is a duel sport too, you have to win the balls to be able to play football.”
“We were lousy in the first half, absolutely lousy,” he even said.
