Football: “An extraordinary, exceptional, fantastic season” preferred Didier Santini, the coach of Rodez after the defeat at Saint-Étienne

Didier Santini était fier de la saison de ses hommes. MAXPPP – Rémy PERRIN

Le coach ruthénois a admis la supériorité de Saint-Étienne sur son équipe, vendredi 24 mai.

Didier Santini (entraîneur de Rodez) : "We're disappointed when we arrive at such a wonderful event and don't make it to the end. But afterwards we must recognize the victory of the adversary, who was good, who in what he prepared to upset us in our principles, in our paths that he had put in place. We lacked a little juice and a lot of technique. But then you end up with an exceptional, extraordinary season, with a defeat, that's how it is. But we might as well take it in the Cauldron, with this magnificent audience, and with all our supporters. 

We are a small club at the start, which has grown, but we are in 40-50 matches but that is not an excuse at all, because I think we have heart. We have the ball to get back to everywhere, we made them doubt. They feared us and anything could have happened if the last ball had gone in. But whatever the case, they still had many more opportunities, they were better. And there they deserve it, it must be said.

I think that in life, you have to know how to lose with dignity, with your head held high even if it hurts and it doesn't feel good but when the opposing team deserves it, and you have gave everything to try with what you had that evening, and you fought well. We will have to accept this defeat, work on it.

It is not because there is a defeat that we should forget everything, even if there was sadness in the locker room. That’s what we told them, you have to know how to grow up. I always told them clearly that when you lost, when you had given everything, with the means of the day that you had, you had nothing to reproach yourself for. I have nothing to blame them blame, but the opponent was the best tonight.

It’s an exceptional, fantastic, magnificent season, a meeting of men, with the staff and all the people to work together. We will take stock in the days to come but today, that's the only word that comes to mind, is to tell myself that in Saint- Étienne, in this fantastic stadium, against this magnificent team, at no time did we arrive here to tell them we are giving you the match. We tried, but they were very, very good, and then afterward, the idea that we grew up on that, that we had extraordinary encounters all season, that we had a great time. rsquo;we came back from a little nowhere, that we managed to make many teams doubt, and all of a sudden, make ourselves feared a little by adversaries who at one time did not really know Rodez.

Olivier Dall’Oglio (Saint-Etienne coach) :"We had to pass at all costs and we passed with a match, I think, an accomplished match. A match where there were many chances. We took the opening match as we should have. We put pressure on, we went to them, we added depth. So it was interesting. In this kind of match, what always scares me a little is not finishing.

I had confidence in the boys because I really felt their determination at half-time. Really a strong determination to achieve something, even if at half-time, we said to ourselves that's good, there are interesting things. But we're going to have to go through force and if we have to go through force, we will go through force. We missed some chances but we knew we would have more in the second half. We had fewer, but we managed to score two goals. So that’s interesting for the team, for the mind anyway. And being rewarded for all these efforts is clear.

We need to find coordination between the passer and the centerer, the right solution. We can be better positioned within 18 meters. We need to work on that again. Even though we've worked quite a bit this week, we'll have to come back to it. When you have so many chances, you should be able to score even more than that. We were delivered by Nathan at the end. He insisted because they wore out after a while.

With the audience behind, it was extraordinary. We needed this audience. I think he carried us at one point."