It was fifteen minutes of crying at PSV. The people of Eindhoven were well on their way to a semi-final in the Conference League. It went wrong just before time. Trainer Roger Schmidt was disappointed but felt he could not blame his team.
PSV missed a number of strong players against Leicester. Including Olivier Boscagli and Noni Madueke. Where the trainer did not want to use this as an excuse on Wednesday, he did so on Thursday after the game.
“Under the conditions that were there, my team did a fantastic job. Unfortunately we could not bring the correct bills. But it was a great football game with a good performance from us. My team did a great job.”
Searching for a cause of the defeat, the coach kept coming back to the lack of a number of players. “You can see that they bring in two good fresh players at half-time. With us Phillipp Max and Joey Veerman played 70 minutes. That was actually a miracle. Max has been ill for the past few days.”
Apart from the fact that PSV missed many players, they were close to a semi-final. It might also have been 2-0, Schmidt also saw. “We played good football and had enough moments to make it 2-0. Unfortunately, Leicester did get their moments, they had more power in the last half hour.”
Eran Zahavi agreed with his trainer’s words, but also managed to hand out the compliments to his team. “We should have scored in the second half. That was an expensive lesson. I think we’ve done well. We fought against a good opponent. Leicester City are the top favorites for the title in my eyes.”
PSV may have lost to a good opponent, but the European campaign will not be long in the memory. The team from Eindhoven started in the preliminary rounds of the Champions League and stranded in the quarterfinals of the Conference League. Still, Schmidt and Zahavi feel they can be proud of the achievements.
“It has been a long time since PSV was in a quarterfinal of a European tournament,” said the striker afterwards.
“It was a long European season. Didn’t lose much in Europe either. But at the end you are left empty handed. We have presented ourselves well internationally as PSV. We couldn’t do more than this”, concluded the German trainer.