Paris Saint-Germain welcomed LOSC to the Parc des Princes on Saturday evening for the 24th day of Ligue 1. A perfect match to fine-tune their preparations, just a few days before their clash with Liverpool. And the least we can say is that the Parisians must have had the intensity of a Champions League evening, as they smothered Lille for almost the entire match. In the end, the Rouge et Bleu came away with a 4-1 victory (PSG/Lille video highlights). Bruno Génésio, coach of Les Dogues, spoke to DAZN after the match:
What words did you use at half-time to get a reaction?
At half-time, it was simply a question of lifting our heads and showing a different face to the one we showed in the first half. Even though Paris played a very, very good first half, we made it very easy for them.
At the end of the game, I simply took responsibility for my mistakes, because I’m 100% to blame for this defeat. All my choices tonight were wrong. Especially in the first half.
I think that in this kind of match you have to do a lot of things very, very well to hope for a positive result. You have to show commitment, but we didn’t do that and I can’t explain it. We completely missed our half, and the start of the game hurt us enormously.
In any case, I didn’t recognize my team’s face. In the second half, we showed a different side, and that’s what we’ll have to build on for the next few games.
Génésio: “In this championship, there’s Paris, Paris and Paris”.
Do you get the feeling that the players may perceive a lack of ambition to go forward just because we’ve positioned two defensive-minded players?
Unconsciously, it’s perhaps a negative message that’s been sent out. That’s why I’m taking it on board. On our side, most of my attacking players on the flanks were coming back from injury. They didn’t have enough playing time to start a match like that.
We went with what we thought was best for this match. It didn’t work against a great team. In this championship, there’s Paris, Paris and Paris. The others are fighting for what’s left. They’re on a different planet from the 17 other teams in this championship.
Was the message to invite your players to provoke PSG into making mistakes?
Yes, yes, that was obviously the message. In terms of possession, we knew it was going to be difficult. We wanted to be ambitious in our play. The message may have been misconceived with the choices we made, but the changes did us a lot of good.
We’ve seen a different face with the players who’ve returned. We’re playing Dortmund on Tuesday, and all the choices and considerations have been made with tonight’s game in mind, but also with Tuesday’s game in mind. I don’t want to be a crybaby, but maybe our management could have done a lot better.
