On the return from the Christmas holidays, José Alberto analysed the current situation regarding the pandemic. “Postponing matches are not easy decisions. All the teams have been badly affected, there are many cases. The measures must be unanimous in the First and Second Division.”

The holidays have helped to recover a number of players. The coach commented: “We’re going to recover some injured players and those who tested positive for COVID.” In addition, “the break allowed us to reflect on what we’ve been doing wrong, as well as individual and collective performances. We’ve reached many conclusions, there’s a lot of room for improvement and we need to be consistent.”

Tomorrow the team will kick-off the second round of the competition. José Alberto hopes injuries will be kind to the team and “circumstances help. We face the second round with enthusiasm and ambition, we’re on time for everything. We’re working on improving the squad. There will be new signings that are very advanced, hopefully the sanction will be lifted soon,” affirmed José Alberto.

“I believe in the day to day, in our hard work and the team we have. We need to perform to the max and the objective will be determined as we go. There’ll be a lot of surprises in the second round, and we want to be one of them,” said the Blue and White coach about the second half of LaLiga SmartBank.

José Alberto didn’t want to miss the chance to clarify the misunderstanding that arose at the end of the match against CD Leganés. “I left 30 seconds before because I thought it had finished,” he said. “We live by and for Málaga, I would never let the team down. I apologise to the fans and anyone I may have offended,” he said.

The Malaguista coach ended the press conference by talking about what he hopes from the team tomorrow at the Municipal de Santo Domingo. “We hope to be a competitive, recognisable and brave Málaga. We want this identity, which we’ve asked the team for,” he said.