Matjaž Kek didn’t want to sugarcoat the defeat in Oslo: “We were really desperate at times, the Norwegians taught us the right lesson”
Photo: Nik Moder / Sportida
It’s been too long for the coach, too long in football to look for excuses and alibis after such a match, trying to downplay the heavy failure. Matjaž Kek quickly laid out the facts after the Slovenian national team’s heavy defeat in Oslo. He was just as he always is. Direct. Blunt.
“Completely deserved victory for Norway, while we appeared really desperate at times,” Matjaž Kek firmly emphasized in front of the Sportklub camera after the 0:3 loss to Norway. “The first goal threw us off rhythm a bit, then we played for a while. But so many mistakes, so many lost duels… No, it was not good. Of course, such a day can happen, but it’s important to be smart enough to learn something from it. I think we all realize that the Norwegians taught us a real lesson.”
Matjaž Kek: “It looked like we were together for the first time”
Matjaž Kek believes things could have been different if Slovenia had not clearly succumbed to the atmosphere at Ullevaal and had not conceded the opening goal so quickly. “We warned about the full stadium, the good atmosphere, that the home crowd pushes them forward. We said we had to hold on for 10, 15 minutes and calm them down. In the end, it looked like we were together for the first time and that we hadn’t trained at all. The kinds of mistakes we made are punished immediately at this level. Everything went wrong. We need to be honest and congratulate them; they took advantage of what we gave them. Someone might interpret this differently, but we, if we’re not in the mine, if we’re not literally digging, we’re in big trouble. This time we were too passive; we were too far back. There were other balls and lost duels, and some squandered chances. I hope this defeat serves as a good wake-up call for all of us,” elaborated the Maribor native.
The coach admitted that recent events had significantly affected the atmosphere in the national team, which lost assistant coach Boštjan Cesar, but he didn’t want to attribute too much importance to it. “The climate around the national team wasn’t good, but I don’t want to hear anyone say that influenced us. We were too weak, and we are to blame for all of this. In 3 days we have a new match; we must do everything to be better in Kazakhstan,” Matjaž Kek concluded, already looking towards Almaty, where Slovenia will be in action on Sunday.
This text was automatically translated using AI.
Author: editorial Football Planet
National Team
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