Toril: Møller can play [as a striker or a winger] but...she can have more possibilities as a left-winger.

Coaches Alberto Toril and Valentyna Kotyk spoke to the press after Real Madrid’s 3-0 win over WFC Kharkiv in the final group stage match in the UEFA Women’s Champions League.

Managing Madrid attended and asked Toril about Møller and Asllani and asked Kotyk about the difficulties of playing Las Blancas.

The following are all quotes from Toril bar the last one, which is from Kotyk.

Ivana’s and Asllani’s physical/medical statuses

[Ivana] said that she felt bad and we sent her home. She felt unwell and hopefully she will soon be with us.

[On Asllani:] In the end, you try to save the players a bit. We have many games in a row. We have been playing every three days in the last month. We have a very large squad with a player who just came back from a long-term injury and, well, we try to take care of them. We will see when I look at [Asllani] in the morning, if she really has something. Let’s hope not but, in the event of her absence, we also have other players who are ready.

Caroline Møller Hansen’s best position

She can play in both positions [as a striker and as a winger] but where we see that she can have more possibilities is as a left-winger. She is powerful, moves well in space, and she has ability. She has to improve a little bit in her finishing. She needs to be a little more selfish as soon as she has completed her dribble. Her long-range shooting and her shooting inside the area are both good. We will alternate the two positions a bit. Right now she is playing more as a winger. She is a player with real developmental possibilities and we are very content with her work.

The team’s performance

I’m happy with the victory, happy with the game. It was not easy to play in a match with the classification [to the knockouts] already decided. We executed a solid performance, a complete performance. In the end, it’s about competing and having a competitive mentality and I think we are following that.

Madrid’s positive offensive set-piece display

As for the set-pieces, we have people within the coaching staff who work well on these actions and we have been rehearsing them the day before the game and it came out quite well. We keep rehearsing, we always look at ways in which we can damage the opposition.

Madrid’s quarter-final matchup

Firstly, we’re very content to be here. It’s our first time in the Champions League. It’s a great achievement to be among the eight greatest teams in Europe. We know that we’re going to get a complicated and tough opponent. We’re going to try to improve and arrive at these moments with a higher competitive level. In football, anything is possible.

Valentyna Kotyk on the difficulties of facing Madrid on the day

Yes, of course we understand that we had a couple of weaknesses that we wanted to correct in the second half, so, at halftime I was telling them, of course, we believe that we could score and that we could create moments. But the problem was that several key players got injured and they could not give the result that we hoped for. The whole team was struggling and doing their best to play.