The 40-year-old tactician was happy with the performance of Valencia players in their Copa del Rey semi-final second leg against last year’s finalists, Barcelona.
In a cagey affair at the Camp Nou, http://www.senore.com/Football-soccer/Barcelona-c38604 triumphed 2-0 over a resilient Valencia. Despite their ousting from the Spanish domestic cup competition, Unai Emery was in high spirits and praised his players for their performance on the pitch.
Emery rued Los Che’s missed chances in front of goal but hailed their performance over the two legs against the Spanish and European champions. The Spanish manager stated that they have more positives than negative to take from the match, which will help
them in their La Liga adventures.
"We have to give credit to http://www.senore.com/Football-soccer/Valencia-c40863 for what they did against a great rival and great players," Emery told reporters in the post-match press conference. "To beat them we have to do things better.
"We had two good matches against them but we missed something. The most important thing is that we had chances to score, which is positive, while the negative aspect was that we allowed them to create chances which we did not want them to have.”
Barcelona won 3-1 on aggregate and Emery was quick to acknowledge La Blaugrana’s superior quality.
"We were unlucky enough to have good matches and good spells, but we could not beat Barca because of their quality. We knew this tie would be hard, but we remained hopeful.”
Valencia went into the match without the services from the talismanic striker, http://www.senore.com/Football-soccer/Roberto-Soldado-c31367. Los Che’s inefficiency in front of goal was quite clear without their first-choice striker, as Soldado watched the game from sidelines.
Emery said that Soldado’s availability was not the reason why they lost the game and said that they have quite a big squad.
"We have a large squad and we cannot depend on one player," Emery explained.
"Now we will focus on La Liga again and we are starting a new phase in the Europa League, we will need every player."
Valencia welcome 19th placed Sporting Gijon to the Mestalla for their next La Liga fixture on February 12th.
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