Photo: Sebastián Laureano Miranda / Imago7
For: EFE Updated 27 Apr 2022, 11: 02 am EDT
The Argentinian Andrés Lillini, coach of the Pumas UNAM of Mexican soccer, praised this Tuesday the prominence that his rival has had in the final of the Concacaf Champions League, the Seattle Sounders American, recent seasons in MLS.
“The Sounders is a leading team in the MLS, they have good players, u A system that has been working for years and has been the protagonist in the last six seasons in its League. It is not easy to maintain a hegemony for so long and something solid like Seattle has “, he explained at a press conference.
The Pumas will seek, by hosting the Sounders in the first leg of the Champions League final on Wednesday, to win their fourth Concacaf title, the first since 1989.
“ The Sounders are not a team that gets behind, plus they know how to make good counterattacks because they have fast and talented players. They are going to come to win, I don’t see it being a game in which Seattle gets behind “, added the coach of 47 years.
Lillini assured that the Pumas must be intelligent and aggressive and circulate the ball quickly to score from the first minutes and thus force the Sounders to advance lines.
“It will be a complex series for us. The statistics support Seattle as a strong team . We must situate ourselves in what we have been doing, beyond the rival, do our thing, try to bend with the situations we have, “he said.
The strategist recognized that for his project leading the felines, which began in July 2020, winning the League of Champions would mean “a finishing touch”.
The final of the Concachampions will be the second in the Lillini process , the first was in the Apertura tournament 2022 of the local League, with a limited squad that is the fourth least valuable of the first Mexican division according to Transfermarkt.
“Concacaf is a competition that would vindicate what this group has been doing, it would give a lot of strength to the project to To continue. You always have to put the institution at the top and more an institution like Pumas”, Lillini sentenced.
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