Celades and Gayà preview Champions League crunch clash at Mestalla

In the absence of a traditional pre-match press conference for their game against Atalanta in the Champions League, Valencia CF coach Albert Celades and fullback José Luis Gayà spoke to Movistar + Liga de Campeones on Monday to preview the behind-closed-doors encounter.

Albert Celades, Valencia CF coach

Confidence about turning the result around
"We come into the game believing that we can do it. I said at the time -and I don't think many people were convinced by it- that I think that the first leg result didn't reflect what happened on the pitch. That is something that we can draw from as well. I think that we are capable of doing it, and if we don't then it won't be for lack of effort.

Famous European comebacks
"It happens in football. Many of us here have experienced it -be it playing in games or from watching them on the television. But it does happen. I think that tomorrow we need to have a very good game. Obviously we're up against a very good side. We need to have a near-perfect game in order to go through, but we're confident that we will be able to do it.

The absence of home fans at Mestalla
"We understand the situation that we are suffering on a global level with the coronavirus, and we aren't asking for any preferential treatment, but we are struggling to understand the decision to play behind closed doors when in our daily lives we are seeing other events with large crowds of many people. Not being able to play a game like tomorrow's at an open stadium is something that we find hard to understand."
 

José Luis Gayà
The chances of a comeback
"It would be good if we score early on. I've been lucky enough to experience an historic comeback against Basel, and the near-comeback against Sevilla when I was on the bench. What you have to do is go out there with no fear and with no pressure. We have a very adverse scoreline against us, but we know that anything can happen at Mestalla. We are going to go out there with the mentality of fighting for the comeback, and that we can achieve it.

Hope from the first leg
"I said after the first game that we'd had a lot of chances to have got a much better result, and we are going to face this game with the same mentality. We're going to have the mentality of going at them from the first minute onwards, try to score early and then be very effective and protect ourselves at the back -so that they don't score. We are very confident about our team. We know that the first leg result was very bad, but it didn't reflect what we saw on the pitch. We think that we have a chance."

The hinderance of an empty stadium
"Of course it affects us. They played in front of their fans and we are going to play without ours. Playing at home doesn't benefit you because of the location, but because of the fans who push you on. We've gone a long time without losing at home, and it's because our fans always help us."