Ranieri's hopes revived

Valencia CF gave themselves a great chance of progressing to the knockout stages of the UEFA Champions League after they won 2-1 in Brussels against a hapless RSC Anderlecht who are still without a point. Marco Di Vaio's first goal in ten hours of play proved decisive after Christian Wilhelmsson had cancelled out Bernado Corradi's opener.

Claudio Ranieri, Valencia coach
We knew it was going to be a tough night and it turned out that way. In the first ten minutes, Anderlecht had three dangerous counterattacks. They played with two forwards, and one who played between attack and midfield. That was Iachtchouk, and we had a lot of problems with him. The work of Baraja and Sissoko in this respect was very important for us. All in all I am satisfied, first with the result of course, but also that we fought, we gave a lot, and we have ended a bad run of results. I saw some very good things from my team, but not everything went the way I would have wanted. But that is a matter of self-confidence and bearing in mind our recent results it it not surprising that this is missing. I knew that Anderlecht could retain possession very well but we were also good in this aspect tonight. We now have to beat Werder Bremen to go through - we're playing at home so with that advantage and our support, qualification should now be possible.

Hugo Broos, Anderlecht coach
Of course, I am very disappointed about the result. No points out of a possible 15 is very bad, of course. We must also look on the bright side, though. We created chances to score, but when you concede two goals at this level it is too much. When you look at the results in the Champions League they are often 1-0 or 1-1. We've not been able to reach last season's level in this campaign but tonight we didn't play badly. We had the will to win, so that is what I am going to remember from this match - only the positive side, because that might help us in the future. They had three chances and scored two goals. Those goals did not come from big mistakes, but there were some some minor mistakes, and even that is deadly at this level. If you are unable to score more than once from your own half-chances then it is over, but it still is positive that we created those chances. If we could have won today, a miracle might have happened, but seeing that Inter still have to win their home match to become group winners, we never expected much help.

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