Villarreal forward Gerard Moreno has said that comments by Bayern Munich coach Julian Nagelsmann inspired the Spaniards to their shock 2-1 aggregate win over the German giants in the UEFA Champions League quarter-finals on Tuesday.
Leading 1-0 from the first leg, Villarreal snatched a 1-1 draw on the night and a semi-final place through Samuel Chukwueze’s 88th-minute goal.
“Tonight, they [Bayern] made the mistake of not killing us off, and we took advantage of that,” Moreno said.
Photo: AFP
On Monday, Nagelsmann said that Villarreal had made a mistake by winning the first leg by a slender 1-0 margin, “which allowed us to survive.”
“In the first leg, we made the mistake of not finishing them off. All the comments about that served as motivation,” said Moreno, whose cross set up Chukwueze’s tie-winning strike.
“What this team has done is great,” Moreno added.
Robert Lewandowski had put Bayern ahead on the night to level the tie.
Unai Emery’s Villarreal had already knocked out Juventus in the last 16, following a stunning 3-0 win in Turin.
“It’s an extraordinary feeling. It was not easy for us. We are a small club, from a village, like that of Asterix and Obelix,” Emery said. “We are moving forward step by step. We had a very difficult quarter-final.”
The Spaniards next face either SL Benfica or Liverpool in the semi-finals. Juergen Klopp’s Reds took a 3-1 lead into yesterday’s second leg at Anfield.
“It’s unbelievable. It’s taken a lot of hard work,” said Villarreal captain Raul Albiol, who was Man of the Match in Munich and at 36 is two years older than Nagelsmann.
“Our victories are as a team. We have suffered a lot in both games, but to be in the semi-finals is great for Villarreal,” Albiol said. “We knew it was going to be a long 90 minutes and we were going to suffer a lot. We want more.”
Emery basked in the glory of a historic result for Villarreal in his 50th Champions League match as a coach.
“We took a lot of confidence from the first leg result, but we had to defend well and we tried to create our own chances — we created five and took the final one,” Emery added.
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