🚨: Pedri on Yan Diomande after the El Clásico against Barcelona: 🗣️ Pedri: “People will look at the result and say we didn’t do enough. Our fans might feel we let them down, and honestly, I understand that. “But there are games where you try everything, you give everything, and somehow it still isn’t enough. “We tried to push Real Madrid, we tried to control the game, but this was a different kind of match. “What surprised me most was that it happened at our home. This is where we expect to impose ourselves, where we expect to control the game and make the opposition uncomfortable. “We prepared for Mbappé to be a major threat, especially with Vinícius not being as involved as we expected. There are only a few players in world football who can do what Kylian does at that level. “But honestly, Yan Diomande gave us a different problem entirely. “We had watched his clips before the game. We knew he was talented, but watching somebody on a screen and facing him for 90 minutes are two completely different things. “Because this was his first El Clásico, we thought the occasion might affect him. You know how it is. The atmosphere, the pressure, the intensity. Sometimes even a very talented player needs time to settle into a game like this. “Yan didn’t look like somebody experiencing El Clásico for the first time. He looked like somebody who had been waiting for this stage his entire life. “He was so slick with the ball. We tried to close the left side, and he would move into the space we had just created. We sent two players towards him, and somehow he escaped without making it look difficult. “You would think you had trapped him, then suddenly he was facing the other direction and carrying the ball forward. “There was a moment when I looked at him and thought, ‘How are we supposed to defend this boy if he keeps making the right decision every single time?’ “And what made it worse was that he didn’t always need to finish the move himself. “He would attract two or three defenders, create the problem, release the ball at exactly the right moment, and suddenly another Real Madrid player had the space to hurt us. “That is what separates a good dribbler from a dangerous footballer. A good dribbler beats his man. A dangerous footballer beats his man and makes the entire defensive structure collapse. “Honestly, there was something about his game that reminded me of Ronaldo Nazário. Not because I’m saying he is already R9, but because of the way he carries the ball, changes direction and makes defenders hesitate. “You cannot commit too early because he can go past you. But if you wait, he has already found the space to hurt you. “After the game, I went to Lamine. He looked disappointed, and before he even said anything, I had a feeling I knew what was coming. “He looked at me and said, ‘We failed today. I’m disappointed.’ “I told him, ‘We had a problem today that we didn’t prepare for.’ “He asked me, ‘What problem?’ “I looked at him and said, ‘Diomande.’ “He laughed a little, but I was serious. “Yan gave us something we weren’t expecting. We had plans for how to defend Real Madrid, but when a player keeps making decisions you haven’t anticipated, you have to adapt in real time. “And sometimes, even when you adapt, he finds another solution. “That is football. You can study a player all week, but the moment he steps onto the pitch, he can show you something you have never seen before. “The frightening thing is that he didn’t need to score against us to become one of our biggest problems. He made everybody around him more dangerous, and that is what we must find a way to stop next time.” “People will talk about the goals, the result and the rivalry. But inside that dressing room, we know when an opponent has given us something serious to think about. “Yan Diomande did that. “And if this is what he can do in his first El Clásico, imagine what happens when he gets comfortable playing in these games.”

🚨Marco Rose on Bournemouth’s 3-0 win against Manchester United: 🗣️ Marco Rose: “Honestly, the Manchester United we faced today was not what we expected. “Before the game, I said we were preparing for an angry Manchester United. They had lost to Como during the week, so we expected a team that would come out fighting, pressing aggressively and trying to prove something to their supporters. “But what we faced was a tired, slow and surprisingly passive Manchester United. We expected fire, but we got a team that looked like it had already played 90 minutes before the match even started! “The duels they couldn’t win, we won. The spaces they failed to protect, we attacked. And when our chances came, we took them. That’s what good teams do. “When we saw Bruno Fernandes on the bench, we understood that United were taking away one of their biggest sources of creativity and leadership. We told our players to press their midfield, close the passing lanes and make sure United couldn’t find rhythm without him. We executed that plan very well. “I told my players before the game, ‘Don’t be intimidated by the badge. Make them uncomfortable, attack their weaknesses, and force them to make decisions under pressure.’ And that’s exactly what happened. “United had possession at times, but possession without purpose doesn’t frighten anybody. We were comfortable allowing them to have the ball in areas where they couldn’t hurt us, then attacking quickly when they lost it. We knew there would be spaces behind their defense, and we exploited them. “What surprised me most was how little resistance we faced when the game became difficult for them. After the first goal, we expected a reaction. Instead, we saw frustration, misplaced passes and players looking at each other for answers. “And then you look at the lineup: a centre-back playing at right-back, a right-back playing at left-back, a central midfielder playing as a number 10, a number 10 playing on the left wing, and a right winger playing as a striker. Manchester United Football Club… honestly, it looked less like a team with a plan and more like someone had shuffled the positions five minutes before kick-off. “You cannot come to Old Trafford, see Bruno Fernandes sitting on the bench, move players into positions they clearly do not understand, and expect us to ignore those opportunities. We knew we had to make United pay for that decision, and we did. Today, Bournemouth played like a team with a clear identity, while Manchester United looked like eleven players trying to figure out what their plan was.”