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Christian Eriksen explains why Sevilla humiliated Manchester United and why it happened.
Manchester United midfielder Christian Eriksen has disputed claims that their failure to perform in a hostile environment led to their team’s elimination from the UEFA Europa League at the hands of Sevilla.
In the first leg of the quarterfinal last week at Old Trafford, the Red Devils enjoyed a comfortable 2-0 lead, but late in the game they twice put the ball in their own net to equalize the match and send it to Spain.
The Estadio Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan was a nightmare for the men of Erik ten Hag. Youssef En-Nesyri of Sevilla was able to score a goal that was practically handed to him in the first minute due to errors in focus by David de Gea and Harry Maguire. The goalkeeper then hesitated, which allowed Loic Bade’s header to lob him.
As a difficult night for United, Sevilla won 3-0 on the night and 5-2 overall as De Gea lost control of a high ball over the top and let En-Nesyri another simple finish.
After the game, Eriksen attempted to justify United’s unfortunate outcome in an interview with BT Sport.
“A lot of things happened. We didn’t really get in the game from the first minute. I think we tried, but today, we gave them a lot of opportunities to finish us off. I think we lost a bit of coolness in the build-up,” the Dane said.
“They were high pressure and we didn’t deal well with that. I think we made more mistakes than we normally do and personally or not, I think the whole team today, we couldn’t catch up on the mistakes the team made.
“I don’t think it’s anything with that [the atmosphere], take away where we play, if we give away goals as we did today, we’ll lose. It’s nothing to do with the atmosphere, I just think our own game was not strong enough.
“I don’t know why that was. It’s football, sometimes you have good days, sometimes you have bad days and today was one of those. We tried to do everything we could to avoid it, but we couldn’t and we have a game in four days for revenge.”