The Videoton manager gave his reaction to the cup game against Vac.
Marko Nikolic:
Just like last year, Videoton FC went out to a side from a lower league in the Hungarian cup. Does this mean that we can concentrate on the big game with Ferencvaros?
I do not think that this was the reason. It was not easy preparing for the game. We played on a hard pitch against good opponents. I also wanted to rest a couple of players for the game with FTC. We are coming towards the end of the year. I also take my own responsibility for the result as I gave some players the chance to impress, and thought that they could cope with second division opponents. Sadly they were not better than the opponents. These 90 minutes are a good signal for all of us with regards to this. We will need a bigger and better squad if we are to be successful in the future in Europe, the cup and the league.
Is it a positive that we can now fully concentrate on the league?
A defeat is never positive and I do not like losing. I do not even know when I last lost a cup game as a manager. I cannot see a positive at all, but the fact is that we now have to only concentrate on the league.
We had Lazovic, Geresi and Nego on in the second half. What was the reason that our attacking play was not that effective?
It is not that simple. We had Juhasz, Patkai, Stopira missing... but this is a team sport. There is no such thing that I put Lazovic out on the pitch and then we win. Sometimes people think that things are decided by one player. It is not this way. We did not lose because of our attacking play, but because the defence made big mistakes.
How will we prepare for the Ferencvaros game after this?
We will prepare in the same way as we have until now. We lead the league by three points and we will be playing Ferencvaros for the top place in the winter. Naturally we want to win Saturday's big game.
Do you think that the good performance in the league was followed up by a half hearted performance in the Hungarian cup today?
I did not see that they took the game lightly. Our tactical quality was missing and we made big mistakes, which is why we lost. We made errors in our positioning, and our tactical discipline was not always correct. We had several good matches in a series but today's game did not go the way it should have.
Horváth Károly:
"The players attitude was positive to the maximum. There was not a hit of any player being scared. Our players dared to play and they believed that they were capable of achieving success. I would not pick out any player as all of the players and the coaching staff performed well today. The same applied to the way we prepared for the match. We were not nervous and tense and we knew that there was nothing to lose. We did not really prepare in any special way for the game., but naturally we are aware of Videoton FC, and we looked at them in more depth. We knew that we were talking about one of the best teams in Hungary. However, we were a little bit surprised that they did not play their strongest line-up today.
Author: David Rechnitzer