Kiko Ramírez: “I take responsibility, but I am not giving up”
Kiko Ramírez faced the press at Pinilla after CD Teruel's defeat against Real Jaén (0-1) on matchday three of Primera Federación, a match decided by a set piece. “Home defeats are very hard,” the rojillo coach began, summing up the game in one “strange” play, “a corner taken along the ground,” and in one feeling: “We cannot find the key.”
On the visitors' goal, Ramírez admitted he had not yet seen the replay: “A low corner that they flick on and I don't know how it ends up in the net. There is a mistake, probably at the near post, in not watching that low ball.” And he accepted the lesson: “That is what set pieces are for. We took free-kicks and we lacked creating much more danger.”
The coach explained that the substitutions were conditioned by the physical state of several players. Andrés Borge, starting for the first time since his injury, “was given 60 minutes, which is what the medical staff recommended; we did not want to risk any more,” which forced Joserra back into “a position that is not his,” with Relu also on a yellow card. The plan was to counter the opponents' back three and a winger who “was causing us a lot of problems” by matching up the wing-backs, and right then the goal came: “When the substitutes were about to come on, they scored. That is the misfortune.” Ramírez did not dodge the criticism: “I admit my responsibility, but I think I would do it again today.”
He valued the spells of good football, with a shot against the post in the first half and several approaches, but insisted on the price of switching off: “When we have those ten bad minutes, the opponent takes advantage.” Hence his message to the dressing room: “We have to go into every match at 200 %, not 100, physically and mentally. The moment you drop your guard a little, they score the silliest goal.” He also pointed to the pending task: “We need to find that match in which the team scores and we can work with the result in our favour. Right now we are always working with the result against us, apart from the first match.”
Asked about the individual tactics he mentioned before the game, he placed them in the duels: “When a player does well it is because he wins the duel. Today many of Jaén's players looked very good to me, and they beat us in those duels. That is where I am working and will keep working.” He put it down to “a bit of everything” and, above all, to time together: “Playing more matches together, getting to know each other better. They are a block that went up last year and know each other very well; we are going down that road.”
Up front he highlighted that Sergio Moreno and Moraitis “played together for the first time in an official match” and that he will repeat with both: “They are the two strikers the team has. Moraitis suited us very well because he is a box player and Sergio is more of a number ten who fights for everything. I think we caused them problems.” Of Borikó, who made his debut in the closing stages, he noted that “he has stride, he has pace, even playing in front of the full-back,” and he praised Joserra: “He has done a great job on his wrong foot, but he has had a hard time. Teams know it and they press us on that flank.”
For the fans he had the most heartfelt words of the press conference: “The fans, ten out of ten. That is what saddens me most: how hard it is to bring people in and not being able to give them a win because of a lapse at a corner.” In his view, “Jaén have taken too much reward. In spells they played very well, but too much reward, from my point of view.”
And he closed with a statement of intent: “We are gutted, me first, and I take responsibility because I am the coach, but I am not giving up. I will keep working so that this team, instead of playing twenty good minutes, plays a hundred if necessary. We know the road will be long and hard. We have to get back up once more. There is no other way.”
