Virgil van Dijk gave a scathing assessment of Southampton’s 1-1 draw with Hapoel Be’er Sheva, admitting to feeling “s***” after a “stupid goal” dumped them out of the Europa League.
Southampton either needed to draw 0-0 or beat their Israeli visitors and they looked well on track to at least accomplish the former, as Hapoel offered very little threat for the first 79 minutes.
But then Maor Buzaglo produced a clinical finish to punish an Oriol Romeu error and put Hapoel ahead and, although Van Dijk levelled late on, it was not enough as Bachar Barak’s men progressed thanks to edging the teams’ head-to-head record with an away goal.
“I’m very disappointed – I feel s*** to be honest with you,” said Van Dijk. “We need to do much better, especially in the first half.
“We knew how they were going to play – we needed to do much better especially with chances we had, and every time they broke on us it was a bit dangerous.
“We needed to get our organisation right instead of always attacking. That’s something we need to talk about.
“We just need to focus on the league the most now. The EFL Cup is special, but with the current group we can do something beautiful in the league.
“But we need to be clinical and not concede stupid goals like we did.”
COMMENTS