Villarreal forward Gerard Moreno said Bayern Munich coach Julian Nagelsmann’s words spurred the Spaniards to a 2-1 aggregate victory over the German champions in the Champions League quarter-finals on Tuesday.
Villarreal salvaged a 1-1 draw on the night and a place in the semi-finals with Samuel Chukwueze’s 88th-minute goal after leading 1-0 in the first leg.
“Tonight they (Bayern) made the mistake of not killing us off and we took advantage of that,” Moreno said.
On Monday, Nagelsmann said Villarreal had made a mistake by winning the first leg by a slender 1-0 margin “which allowed us to survive”.
“In the first leg we made the mistake of not finishing them off. All the comments about that served as motivation,” said Moreno, whose cross set up Chukwueze’s tie-winning strike.
“What this team has done is great.”
Bayern Munich had leveled the tie with a goal from Robert Lewandowski late in the game.
Villarreal, under Unai Emery, had already eliminated Juventus in the last 16 with a 3-0 victory in Turin.
“It’s an extraordinary feeling, it was not easy for us. We are a small club, from a village, like that of Asterix and Obelix,” said Emery.
“We are moving forward step by step, we had a very difficult quarter-final.”
In the semi-finals, the Spaniards will face either Benfica or Liverpool. The Reds take a 3-1 lead into the second game at Anfield on Wednesday.
“It’s unbelievable, it’s taken a lot of hard work,” said Villarreal captain Raul Albiol, the man of the match in Munich, who at 36 is two years older than Nagelsmann.
“Our victories are as a team. We have suffered a lot in both games, but to be in the semi-finals is great for Villarreal.
“We knew it was going to be a long 90 minutes and we were going to suffer a lot.
“We want more. We see ourselves as causing problems to all our opponents.”
Emery basked in the glory of a historic result for Villarreal in his 50th Champions League match as a coach.
“We took a lot of confidence from the first leg result, but we had to defend well and we tried to create our own chances — we created five and took the final one,” he said.
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