Three Italian teams beaten and two trophies won in two years. José Luis Mendilibar he made history with Olympiacos, the first Greek team to win a European title. The Spanish coach spoke about himself in a long interview with As: “I’m still the same, I don’t think I’ve stopped to think about it much. When I do it I say to myself: ‘Man, we did something that was difficult to do and that few coaches have managed to achieve.’
Olympiacos is the Real Madrid of Greece and the goal is to always win, even if it’s easy to say. Now we have to build a good squad, keep the players who have been fundamental for us and then get to work.”
The farewell to Sevilla and the new adventure: “When I left Sevilla, I didn’t want to coach. I had received some offers but I rejected them. But when the offer from Olympiacos arrived, despite the situation it was in, with three coaches fired before my arrival , I thought there was good raw material in the squad and that we could achieve results. It was the same thought I had when I arrived in Seville, the situation was similar, I had set myself the goal of the Conference League. I wanted to win the championship, which I never achieved. In the end the opposite happened, we won what we hadn’t set ourselves as a goal.
I think the key was the round of 16 match against Maccabi Tel-Aviv. We lost 1-4 at home and then we made a big splash in Serbia by winning 1-6. At that moment we thought we could do something important; so it was, first in the semi-final against Unai Emery’s Aston Villa, who everyone logically believed to be the favourites, and then in the final against Fiorentina, who had already played in the final the year before and were favourites.”