Okan Buruk: I congratulate our opponent

In the first week of the UEFA Champions League, Galatasaray was defeated 5-1 away in Germany by Eintracht Frankfurt. Manager Okan Buruk made statements at the press conference held after the match.

Buruk said, "After it was 1-0, we were playing incredibly comfortably. We could have found the second goal. In fact, the Italian referee... He made decisions against us throughout the match. He disallowed Barış's goal. While we could have gone into the break leading 3-1, we went into the locker room trailing."

There are differences in the game between the two halves. We gave up on the game early. We mentally checked out of the match. We conceded unlucky goals and made individual errors. We conceded 5 goals when the opponent's expected goals (xG) was 1.17! We also made too many mistakes. Against such a high-pressing team, we had 60 percent possession, but this performance did not match this score," he said.

"I AM THE ONE WHO WILL TREAT AND FIX THIS"

Emphasizing that this result is his own responsibility, Buruk stated, "We can see what managers do right and what they do wrong. There were correct things in the first half and mistakes in the second. I am the one who will treat and fix this. Only the first match has been played, there are 7 matches left. We can enter the top 24, I believe in this. We just had an unlucky day today. We will prepare for the upcoming matches by increasing the things we do well. We could have won very comfortably with the game in the first half, but the game led us to a 5-1 defeat. I am sorry," he expressed.

"I CONGRATULATE OUR OPPONENT"

The manager of the yellow-red team, stating that all their plans worked for the first 35 minutes of the match, continued his words as follows:

"At the end of the first half, we conceded 2 goals in 2 minutes! This lowered our game! This has nothing to do with the names in defense! You can go out with different players and get different results. I play every player. There will be player preferences according to the opponents in the upcoming matches. İlkay and Singo arrived late, they are behind the team. They haven't played many matches. Barış Alper was not with the team for a long time. Icardi returned from injury, he is also in his own preparation phase. We suffered a bad defeat. I congratulate our opponent. They also fought very hard. I wish the opposing team success from now on."

News Source: İHA