Borussia Dortmund captain Emre can launched an angry tirade against his teammates by his side threshing 4-0 according to Barcelona In its quarterfinal of the Champions League first stage on Wednesday.
CAN was visibly frustrated after the match and told Dazn that it was more of an attitude than a tactics or a coaching decision that led to defeat.
“It is not a question of the system, but rather whether everyone is willing to give 100% and make the victims required in games like this,” Can said.
“We’ve gone wrong in the game, we didn’t play well today. We were soft. We weren’t sufficiently cohesive. And we made simple mistakes.
“At this level, these types of errors are hardly punished. That’s why we went down today.
“We played against the big Barcelona team, apparently have some good players, so the only way you can beat them is, if you go there as a team, something we haven’t done,” Can said.
“I think we could do much better, even if they’re so good, I know it. You have to go and we haven’t done it.
“Now we have to do good performance (in the second leg) and try to win the game. We owe it to our fans and we have to give it everything we have.”
Dortmund manager Niko Kovac was similarly critical of the performance of his party.
“They deserved a loser today,” he said at a press conference. “At this level, we made too many mistakes that Barça used with their quality. We had problems in the first 20 minutes, then we admitted the target after a foul that we shouldn’t give away.
“What bothers me is that we invited them to counterattack by losing the ball. In the second leg it will be really difficult.
“I said at the meeting with the team: If you let Barça play, with the players they have without resistance … you have problems. We know they have great quality. We didn’t do what we needed.”
Treble-Cashing Barça will be full of trust for Tuesday’s return leg in Germany against the fighting Dortmund who are eighth in Bundesliga Ranking on 41 points, five of the qualifying points for the next season of the Champions League.
Information from Reuters and ESPN Sam Marsden contributed to this report.
