SHAMROCK ROVERS boss Stephen Bradley criticised the arrogance of Celje manager Alberto Riera after the Irish side overcame their Slovenian opponents in the Europa League third qualifying round on Thursday night.
The former Liverpool player made some provocative pre-match comments, telling The Irish Independent: “We are totally confident. We know what we can do and we’ll try to show we are a better team.”
While they survived a couple of scares, Rovers were worthy 3-1 winners after extra time and advanced to face Greek outfit PAOK in a Europa League playoff next week, while Celje have been demoted to the Uefa Conference League.
The victory means Rovers will contest the group stages of a European competition for the second time in three seasons after Bradley’s men qualified for the Conference League in 2022.
In many people’s eyes, the Hoops were underdogs going into Thursday’s match, particularly after losing the first leg 1-0.
However, the manager suggested their opponents’ pre-match cockiness served as extra motivation to pull off an upset.
“I think they just felt so arrogant in everything they did, how they spoke, their manager was arrogant, he didn’t give us any respect,” Bradley told reporters.
“You could feel that over there, you could feel it in his press before the game, so I knew with his arrogance, very similar to Vikingur, that they would be open for us to hurt them and they were.
“I think these managers think that just because they have had a good playing career that it takes over into managing and coaching. They need to leave their egos at the door and actually do their work. Complete arrogance and a lack of respect he showed us as a club, the staff and the players. I knew if we got them back here we would beat them, because of that arrogance.
“You saw how Sparta [Prague] came here, they gave us the ultimate respect in how they defended and pressed. Vikingur and Celje were the opposite and they got punished for it.”
Asked if he regretted his pre-match comments after the game, Riera — whose former clubs include Man City, Galatasaray, Espanyol and Bordeaux — doubled down.
“I have to be confident in my team,” the Celje boss told reporters. “And still, I am thinking that we are a better team than Shamrock Rovers but we need to show it on the pitch.
“Football is not about who is better all the time. Without everything else, it’s impossible to win. We made a lot of mistakes. I don’t think you can tell me that Shamrock were better than us in the end. It’s about who makes fewer mistakes, who creates the chances and who scores goals from the chances.
“We had lots of chances in the previous game and today, also we had some chances but we didn’t take them. They did, or we let them.
“I say it like this because the first penalty is a present. The second, from a throw-in, is almost a present. So you are giving them goals.
“If you check the goals, they are not coming from any mistakes from Shamrock. They are coming from our situations.”
Bradley was equally unimpressed at these latest remarks.
“He still thinks he’s a player. He was a good player, but when you become a coach and a manager that goes out the window, you have to do your work and respect who you are against. There are levels to this and Sparta gave us the ultimate respect, Celje didn’t. We knew tonight they wouldn’t change, that they would be very open and that we could hurt them and we did that. The players deserve all the credit but his arrogance has really hurt them.
“It’s an easy one for the team. You just have to repeat what he said. It didn’t surprise me at all. When you play the top-level teams, and we have played enough of them, you can see why they are top-level, they use class in everything they do, how they handle themselves, and how they approach games.
“When you come down the levels, you start to see people who think they are top-level but they are not, and he thought he was top-level. A good player, but it’s irrelevant. Those days are gone. Complete arrogance. His comments in the press yesterday were brilliant for us. They didn’t surprise me at all.”
Bradley suggested the result was “right up there” among the best he has achieved as a manager but added: “We have qualified but I always felt we had the beating of these, and how they behaved, it even gave us more motivation to go and do it.”
