Lemerre’s Post Match Thoughts

Following his team’s 1-0 loss to Serbia and Montenegro yesterday, coach Roger Lemerre had these comments about his team’s performance.

“I was not surprised with the performance of the Serbs. They showed their particular style, based on a block of 9 men, plus two strikers. We made a big error of playing long air balls, while we should have used short, down-to-earth passes. I have a lot of satisfactions, mainly with David Jemmali, who succeeded his integration with the group, and Yahia, who is not used to playing as left full-back. We started well the second half but the substitutions we did, some of them due to injuries, and the quality of the opponent prevented us from dominating the whole of it. We know that friendly matches are always very difficult to negociate.”

Lemerre is certainly right about playing the long air balls. It might work when Tunisia plays smaller opponents, but against teams like Serbia and Ukraine this isn’t going to be very successful. The Carthage Eagles have the technical ability to play a better passing game and I am pleased that Lemerre has identified this.

I also agree that Jemmali looked fine. He wasn’t amazing, but he will be a nice addition to the team.