INTERVIEWS Running more than two hours late, Anderlecht head coach Vítor Bruno and midfielder Thelo Aasgaard walked into the press room at Maksimir Stadium. Airplane issues disrupted their schedule, though the Portuguese manager took part of the blame himself. "To be honest, we were running late to the airport ourselves. When you have a great training session, you sometimes lose track of time."
Following the subpar performance against Cercle Brugge, the pressure is on. At the time, Bruno was quoted as saying he would sign up for a league title immediately if his team managed to bag three points like that every week. It was a statement that drew sharp criticism, but according to the Portuguese manager, it was completely misinterpreted.
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Continue reading "Intellectually dishonest" Bruno fought back firmly during the press conference. "It's intellectually dishonest to cherry-pick one isolated sentence out of an entire speech," he remarked, visibly irritated. The Anderlecht coach went on to highlight the circumstances of recent weeks: "During the international break, I was missing twelve players. Five of them started against Cercle right away, each having played under different instructions with their national teams. So you can't expect everything to click instantly. We aren't a side that's been building on set patterns for four years."
Despite the inconsistent displays, Bruno remains combative. "Don't forget that we've won ten of our fifteen matches. You don't do that if there's no quality in this squad."
