Chus Mateo: “I'm proud of the team and we have to keep moving forward”
"We never lost faith but in the end we weren't strong enough for the comeback", said the coach after the Euroleague final.
Chus Mateo spoke in the press room at the Uber Arena in Berlin after the final. The coach made his assessment of the match: "I'd like to congratulate Panathinaikos. They deserved to win today. They played a very good second half. It was the end of a very tough regular season. We worked hard all season long and we're talking about a final. I'm very proud of my players, they fought consistently to get the trophy. We tried and it's not easy to win two titles in a row".
"We knew what we had to do in the first half against their defence and did a good job. They've got very good players themselves, they improved on defence, played with more physicality and we began to lose energy, shooting from outside too much".
Mentality
"I just want to say that I'm very proud of my players. I will say it again, it's not easy to get to the final two years running. We have two options: to cry or to stand up and goa again. We're going to carry on fighting until the end and that's the spirit I want for my team. We must show that the character of Madrid is to congratulate the opposition and keep moving forward".
"Every one of my players is doing the best they can but we started to lose control after the break because we didn't play with the same discipline we played with at the start. They also hit good shots and we were confused and we should have looked to play more on the inside. We never lost faith. We had a chance at three down with three minutes left to play but we were lacking strength at the end".
Personal fouls
"They took us out of the game, no question about it. I'm a bit confused with the refereeing today. We got fouled early with the big guys, something that hasn't happened to us all year in the Euroleague. That's part of the game and you have to know how to deal with it. Today was not the best day for us in that respect. I don't want to say I'm complaining, but you expect the standard to be a bit more even when it comes to using your hands".
Third quarter
"We were thinking that the easy path was to just go on the outside and the basketball that we we play is that we want to get onto the paint first and foremost. We lost some aggressiveness in that sense, but it's a basketball game. The zone affected us at times. At other times it went all the way to the end and we were able to come back. We come away hurt but proud of the effort we put in".
Lack of energy
‘’By the end we will have played more than 90 games and we all want the players to perform at their best in every game. I think it's too many games and it's not easy to stay in good shape from the start to the end, even if we try. We try to play our best every day".
Moving on
"We have to stay positive. We've done a great job this season and it's been worth it. We didn't win and we're leaving sad and we're annoyed. But we have to pick ourselves up tomorrow and we have to do that together. We're a team. We're going to pick ourselves up and on Wednesday we're going to try to beat Barcelona in front of our fans".