Jean-Louis Gasset: "A courageous match"

What is the overall feeling after losing this close game?

We’re very disappointed, and for two reasons: the defeat, because I think that we played a courageous match, and Kévin Monnet-Paquet’s injury, which is likely very serious. We fear that the ligaments of his knee were affected.

Yet for 75 minutes, you stood up to the lead team of the championship…

We played the match that we wanted to play. Paris respected us because they played with practically the same team that they played with Tuesday evening in Manchester. We decided to adopt a low pressure defense, to try to counter if we could. Maybe that lacks ambition. There are players who don’t like when the players are very close, nor the opposing teams who look for them farther down the field. We lost due to an outstanding goal made by a player that will soon become the best player in the world. They needed a goal like that to defeat us because we defended very well. We had a good period during the second half with the corner kicks, balls that passed in front of the net, Gabriel Silva who missed the net by a hair’s breadth. We can score first. So, I don’t think that it was a bad tactic.

Do you regret the parisian goal, which was caused by your team losing possession of the ball?

Stéphane Ruffier is one of the best French goalies. That’s my opinion. It’s impossible to have regrets. Against teams that have as much control, that stifle their opponents, it’s inevitable that we lose the ball. Mistakes are made in the game. There’s no reproach to make. In the locker room, everyone was dejected. Because everyone had the impression that they gave it their all, defended well. We had the impression that we played the match we needed to play. On our home turf we lost against OL and PSG. That must mean something. We have to get back to work Friday in Dijon and try to achieve our goals. It’s not every day that we’ll be deprived of the ball like that.

Could your team have been tougher on PSG’s defense?

When you play against Thiago Silva, few strikers carry weight. There’ve been situations where, with more efficiency, we could have scored the first goal. But we know against who we played. Wahbi? He was nervous, that’s normal. He likes to dribble, make a difference. We didn’t have the ball. He was frustrated.