Paco López: “They were better in the opening minutes, but the sending-off turned the game around”

C.D. Leganés coach Paco López appeared at a press conference on Sunday after the match between Leganés and Real Zaragoza at the Ibercaja Stadium, corresponding to matchday 16 of LALIGA HYPERMOTION, which ended in a 3-2 home victory.

The coach gave his assessment of the match as follows:

First half: "In the first fifteen minutes, they were better eleven against eleven. They came out pushed on by their fans and we were too timid with the ball. They created two or three chances in which Juan Soriano did very well, and when they were at their best, we scored the goal. Shortly after, Marvel was sent off and from then on we were forced to sit back a little more with one less player. The equalizer came from a mistake in our marking".

Second half: “We were doing well in a low block, but a mistake in bringing the ball out led to Toni Moya's great goal. With more space, they scored their third, but we kept pushing and were rewarded with the 3-2 and a slight chance of equalizing”.

Marvel's sending off: "It's a shame that a tool as valuable as VAR, with the equality that exists and what we're all playing for, penalizes a sending off as happened today with Marvel. If you freeze the image for the referee, logically you're going to think it's a sending off, when watching the sequence you can see that it's just another part of the game and there's no aggression. It's a shame that these things can cloud football with everything at stake. They need to rethink this, because it's a shame that a match can be decided like this. I understand that you can intervene in the event of aggression, but as the players know this, at the slightest contact they try to get VAR involved. Today we were disadvantaged, the match was decided by that sending off, although in the first few minutes they were better than us, but you can't draw any conclusions with the level of competition in this division".