On the occasion of his election as best coach of March, Marcelino García Toral gave an interview which is available one LaLiga’s Youtube channel. On the pitch at the Ciudad Deportiva, and with the trophy in his hand, the Asturian coach addressed several questions about his second stage on the Villarreal CF bench.
Marcelino acknowledged that his previous knowledge of the club made it easier for him to make first contact with the players. He was the third coach to pass through the yellow bench this season, which gave an idea of the difficulty of the challenge. “If you face it, there are no excuses,” he said in the interview, in which he also pointed to the goals conceded and the chances conceded to the opposition as the problems he tried to tackle first and foremost.
MGT referred to the defeat at Las Palmas as a turning point in the team’s trajectory. The improvement eventually translated into results in a spectacular month of March, with three wins in three games (5-1 at Granada, 2-3 against Betis and 1-0 against Valencia). As a result, he became the fifth coach of the season to receive the best coach of the month award (after Ancelotti, Míchel, Simeone and Valverde).
The Villarreal coach wanted to highlight the value of dialogue with the player to increase the efficiency and competitiveness of a team. At the end of the video, at the suggestion of the interviewer, he analysed the sequence that led to the third goal against Betis (scored by Sørloth). “Footballers are the real protagonists of this world”, he said with conviction.
