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Villarreal coach Unai Emery was relieved to advance to the second leg of the Champions League semi-final after a 2-0 defeat to Liverpool on Wednesday as his defensive plan backfired at Anfield.

Liverpool looked frustrated in the first half as the Spanish team emptied its defense, but the landlord was rewarded for being patient after the break and determined the victory with another goal from Sadio Mane.

Villarreal were besieged by a Liverpool attack throughout the game, and he did not shoot any ball into the goal.

“I have to admit, it would have been much worse,” Emery told Movistar Plus. “We tried to attack, pass and create attacks, but (Liverpool) did not allow us to do anything, and the defensive resistance was the last attempt to maintain our confidence in the second leg.”

“We did not do anything to regret it. We have to be humble and try to make the return count completely different. We have to play more aggressively as before.”

Villarreal appeared in the shadow of a brave team that beat Juventus in the last 16 to beat Bayern Munich in the quarterfinals.

“The plan is to try to keep our sheets as clean as possible and postpone the decision on our field,” defender Pav Torres told Movistar Plus.

“But in the end, any mistake will punish you,” he continued, referring to Perbis Estopinian’s own goal early in the second half. “In the first half we felt comfortable, our plan went well, but we faced a strong opponent and were able to score the second goal quickly when we recovered from the first goal.”

The European champions failed to start their regular counter-attacks, which caused a lot of problems for Juventus and Bayern, and he was lucky to be out with this decision.

But the Spanish team hopes to miss the return leg next Tuesday.

“We are just two goals short,” Torres said. “A lot of things can happen in football and 90 minutes is long. If we score early we will come back to the game.”

“We’re a completely different team at home, we’re on the field to win. We still have confidence in ourselves, we have no doubt. I assure our fans that in the second leg they will see the well – known version of Villarreal.”

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