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Roberto Mancini: "This is the reason football is good, teams can't win every match"

Roberto Mancini on the club's first league defeat of the season.
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We did not deserve to win, we had a lot of chances to score, which we did not take. This is the reason football is good, teams can not win every match. There are always matches when you are not so good, but you win. Today we were not fast enough, we did not move well enough on the pitch, so we lost.

For the second time after the international break Zenit did not look as good as before the break. Do you connect these things?

Yes, this is a small problem and we must live with this. The problem is we have a huge number of players who are left for their national teams, some cross the oceans and they return at different times, some on Monday, some on Tuesday, some even on Thursday. Everyone connected differently to the training process. This does not help us. 

S ignor Mancini, in the Russian championship, most  teams will play against Zenit like  Arsenal did today. Will you work in training on how to deal with this ?

We do this already. We have played with teams that play defensively and we won those games. I repeat, football is such that sooner or later you lose. Even though we did not deserve it today. We were not 100% ready, but this will not affect our upcoming games. 

How do you rate Oleg Shatov's performance today? 

I subbed him not because I did not like how he played. He has recently recovered from a serious injury. We could not give him more than 45 minutes, so he was replaced at half-time. I am still hoping that his game will improve soon.