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Gutman 'proud', Benfica disbelief

SL Benfica coach Jorge Jesus said: "Some results just cannot be explained," after the 3-0 loss at Hapoel Tel-Aviv FC that eliminated the Eagles and left victorious Eli Gutman "mightily proud".

Gutman 'proud', Benfica disbelief
Gutman 'proud', Benfica disbelief ©UEFA.com

Hapoel Tel-Aviv FC coach Eli Gutman said: "What more do you need?" after his team's first UEFA Champions League win, soaking up the SL Benfica pressure for a 3-0 victory. Benfica are out after FC Schalke 04's 3-0 defeat of Olympique Lyonnais and could still be caught for third place by Hapoel; Jorge Jesus was stunned by the loss.

Eli Gutman, Hapoel coach
Our players are a bunch of winners and they proved it today. We are mightily proud and extremely satisfied – three points in the Champions League, what more do you need? We proved we can deal with set pieces which is our weakness. You never know how this game pans out. At 1-0 we knew that we had to play on the counter. At 2-0 they threw caution to the wind while I introduced a third central defender and knew we would score the third on the break.

We played a combination of man-to-man and zonal marking and prepared ourselves to the best of our ability. It just ended up being one of those days. But our problem is that we are already thinking about our next league match. My wife is sitting is sitting at home with my parents and kids and I dedicate this match to them. The victory is good for my resume but also great for the club's finances.

Jorge Jesus, Benfica coach
After this result I can say that there are some results that just cannot be explained. We lost 3-0 having had 21 corners and five or six chances to score. Hapoel entered our box three times and scored three goals.

After the first goal we took some risks because we knew that we had to win the match in order to go through, and we kept on creating chances. [However] our defence was without protection after the second goal but I had to do that to turn the game with Schalke winning their match. There is nothing much more to say; what happened on the pitch was one thing, the result was another. We're out sooner than we expected.

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