By Gerardo Romero
06 Aug 2024, 10:17 AM EDT
Chivas Rayadas de Guadalajara coach Fernando Gago was quite upset by his team’s elimination in the group stage of the Leagues Cup after the defeat they suffered this weekend against Los Angeles Galaxy in the penalty shootout; with this result, the red-and-white club loses for the second consecutive year all chances to fight for the title of champion of this tournament that unites the clubs of the Liga MX with those of the Major League Soccer (MLS).
Speaking to the media, the coach said that despite the elimination, he does not consider it a failure for the Sacred Flock and also stated that the team maintains the sole objective of being able to have the best possible performance in each of the matches to show what they are made of.
“What a good word! What is failure? In sport there is no such word as failure. Imagine that we all have the desire to win, we all have the desire to grow in life. I think that trying again, trying again, is a big problem, and this is being told to you by someone who has been injured five times in football,” he said.
“I lost the Copa America Final, the Copa Libertadores Final, the Champions League Semi-Final, I lost the World Cup Final and I don’t consider myself a failure in football for having lost, on the contrary, these are lessons that I have learned. Obviously there are ways to try to win and let’s not take it to the point where if you lose a match it’s a failure. Are all the teams that were eliminated also failures? I don’t agree with that,” Gago added in his statements.
Regarding the match against Los Angeles Galaxy, the coach considered that his team maintained a high level of competition and this was reflected in the 2-2 draw they achieved; despite this, he acknowledged that they ended up being outclassed in the penalty shootout where the result of a match is usually more unpredictable.
“We dominated the game today, we created a lot of chances. I think we had six shots inside the penalty area, if I remember correctly, and that is very difficult to achieve today. The team did it today. Talking about merits in football is a bit difficult to explain because we did everything to win the game, I think we deserved it, but the result was different and we were eliminated from the competition. We did everything to win, sometimes it is not just based on results, but also on how the game is approached, the way it was played. And don’t bring the fans into the mix, because the fans play with their feelings. The fans want to win all the tournaments they play and I totally agree, I am in that opinion, but let’s not focus the question only on the result,” he stressed.
“Twenty shots on goal, there are a lot of circumstances to create chances and the least elaborate play and with bad positioning, was Cade’s goal. So, this is football. We had six or seven shots inside the six-yard box. It’s been a long time since I saw a team that shot six or seven times below the goal. We had Beltrán’s shot that hit the post, a lot of chances to create and try to win the match. Unfortunately it didn’t happen,” concluded Fernando Gago.
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