Pellegrini: “La Real beat us 2-0 without scoring a goal”

Manuel Pellegrini appeared with a very serious face in the press room of Reale Arenawhere he described as “absolutely nothing” the punishment implied by Hernandez Maeso, at the request of VARand specified the match between Royal Society and Real Betis as a “very bad match, in which neither team kicked on goal.”

“The penalty play seems like a typical local penalty to me, where the players try to simulate on the spot so that the VAR intervenes. The referee fell, went to him and awarded a penalty, but a completely non-existent penalty… and an own goal,” assessed Pellegrini in the press room. “Overall, for me it was a very bad game, because neither team kicked on goal. They went two-nil with two actions that were our own goals, where they didn’t have a player, and a penalty the referee took because he wanted to take it. We dominated it, especially the second half, but we didn’t have the creativity to shoot on goal.”

Betis are in a terrible streak of results and in just one week they have three defeats: “We are trying to get out of this negative streak as soon as possible. I repeat that when you are on this streak, you lose these types of games, where Real Sociedad won two-nil without scoring a goal on goal in ninety minutes. And as I said, we don’t have the creativity to try to discount either, so we have to focus on improving, on keeping the attitude and confidence in what we’re doing, and we’ll come out with bad results.”

Pellegrini pointed out the keys to getting out of this deep hole: “We can get out of here with calmness and confidence in what we are doing. I repeat now that the least missing is attitude, what is missing is football, creativity that we cannot have. But the team is trying and for various reasons, especially the lack of creative players, we can’t do much damage, but I see the group as strong, aware of the bad results we are getting so far and confident that we can recover it later.”