Roger Schmidt: "We had to be very good all the time"

POST-MATCH

In his analysis of Benfica's 2-0 win over Boavista on the matchday 18 of the Liga Betclic – a game played on Friday, January 19, at the Estádio da Luz –, Roger Schmidt shared his delight at the home win. 

PATIENCE, ORGANIZATION AND ATTITUDE WERE THE TRUMP CARDS

"It's always good to play in our stadium and win games, it was a great night for us. It was a tough game against a good opponent, but we put in a good display. We had a lot of moments around and inside the box, and we had to show patience again, because in the first half, we lacked objectivity and incision to use our chances in a better way, to score goals, but it's also a quality we have. If we need patience, we have it, and we can also speed up the game when we need goals. In the end, we scored two very good goals, we deserved to win the game, and I'm also very happy that we didn't concede, because that's always good, especially when a team waits the whole game for counter-attacks, and they showed that they have quality. We always have to be aware of these moments, we also had to defend some difficult moments. We had to show the quality to be organized at all times. There too, we were very incisive in running back at the right times. I saw a lot of mentality and motivation in these situations, from all the players, including the attacking players, so I'm very happy. We deserved to win the game, but we didn't give our opponents many moments to score. I'm very happy with the team's performance and the attitude the players showed, it was a very good game."

WINNING STREAK AS A SOURCE OF CONFIDENCE

"I don't really think about the moment. Of course we're in a good moment, we're playing well, winning games, showing spirit on the pitch. That's what we expect of ourselves, that's the moment. It's always good to have confidence. Winning games is good for confidence, and it's a good confirmation that we're doing things right as a team. We also see that, in all these games, we've always had to be very well-prepared and work hard as a team. We have to keep concentrating on each game and now the league is on a break, we're going to the League Cup. We hope to have two games in the competition. Of course it's a special competition, but if we play in it, and we're in the semi-finals, we'll do our best to win this title. Now we have to recover, and then we'll prepare very well for the game with Estoril [Wednesday, January 24, at 7:45 pm in the Estádio Municipal de Leiria]. We've got a lot of games coming up."

COMPETITIVENESS IN ATTACK

"We have a very good competitive situation, I like that. With Petar [Musa], Marcos [Leonardo] and Arthur [Cabral] and, hopefully in the next week or two, also with Casper [Tengstedt]. I hope they push each other to do their best." 

JOÃO NEVES ON THE BENCH

"Yesterday [Thursday, January 18], in training, João [Neves] had a moment when he felt uncomfortable with a muscle. It's not serious, but we didn't want to take any risks. That's why we took advantage of the moment to give him some rest and only use him when we needed him, as I did in the last 10 minutes. That's why we gave him some rest, and Florentino has also been playing very well in recent weeks and deserved more time from the start."