Alexander Santana hopeful after defeat: “We are on the right track”

The Week: “In the last third we missed some capacity to define a little better. But there are things that have not been missed, and if there is one thing that has not been missed today, it is our ability to get ahead, to pull Sporting over there, to be very competitive and, above all, to be very brave. More and more we look at this DNA; it is something we want to keep alive, very alive within the presence of the whole group. And today, looking at this second part, at this growth that we have had day after day, game after game, we are not satisfied with the result, of course, but very pleased with what we have done in there and then. More than that is feeling that players feel that same and do not abandon this idea of victory every minute they spend in the game. Being competitive in this way will often make us, from now on, have the ability to score much more than what we have been scoring. We are on the right track, we believe more and more and more we feel that we are very competitive.”

Did half-field Sporting surprise you?: “It’s something we’re going to analyze, but honestly at the beginning of the game, with the fantastic technical team we have, we’ve analyzed, got the information down, corrected, fit. From the first to the second part, we had some mismatches in our preventions, and then we ended up in defensive balances, in our defensive transition, by overcoming this difficulty. And from there I think we've mastered the game. Maybe the domain is a strong word, but at least the control of the game we had it and we managed to translate it later and port our team a fantastic second part.”

Next steps from Casa Pia: “We work to win all the games, not only at home but outside, and we love not to cling to that sort of thing. We cling to what we have always said since the beginning of the year: we cling to work. To work, to what we control, not to things that are beyond our control. So for us to play here or play on the other side is completely indifferent from the point of view of our preparation. Of course, both with more fans, as they did in the last game, today, in Estoril, we feel that inside too. And we will continue to work for them, for us and for Casa Pia to increasingly be a reference team. I think we are on the right track.”