Rui Vitoriais not too disappointed following his team’s 1-0 loss against Bayern Munich in the first leg of the Champions League quarter-final match.
Benfica were underdogs coming into the game with Bayern overwhelming favourites for a win. Not many expected the Portuguese team to get a result. A victory for the German club was expected in most quarters and this result has not surprised them. Vitoria feels that such a narrow defeat away from home is a good thing for the underdogs as they can now walk towards winning the home leg in front of their supporters.
Benfica have been riding a wave of good form in recent weeks. The club had a run of eight successive victories before suffering this loss.Vitoria will have every right to feel confident that the club will return to winning ways this weekend againstAcadémica. They need to get back on the right track if they are to keep up their position in the league table. Even though there is not much competition from FC Porto this season, Sporting CP are closely following Benfica in the table. The two teams are separated by just two points after 28 games.
Vitoria is happy with the way his team maintained their strategy throughout the 90 minutes despite the loss.”The game went as we expected. I am proud of my players — we played really well here. Of course we had our problems but in the end we played quite well.Of course I am not too happy with the result, but overall we played really well and we followed our strategy. We played well and that early goal did not kill our confidence. We were able to cause some problems for Bayern and we might even have deserved a goal,” said the Benfica manager.