Oblak: “When you lose a final it is difficult to get up, but the season is not over”

Atlético de Madrid goalkeeper Jan Oblak confessed this Monday that “it is hard and it is difficult to get up” after losing “a final like we have lost” in the Copa del Rey MAPFRE, but he assured that “the season is not over” and that there are “important games” ahead such as this Wednesday against Arsenal FC in the first leg of the Champions League semifinals at the Riyadh Air Metropolitano.

“Always when you lose a final like you lost in the Cup it is hard and it is difficult to get up but in the end the season is not over there, there are still important games ahead of us and the team knows it, the players know it. We have all been disappointed after the final, but there is no time to look down, but up,” said the goalkeeper during the ‘Media Day’ organized this Monday by the club prior to the Champions League semi-final against Arsenal FC.

Oblak was “very happy and very good” to be back with the Colchonero team after suffering an injury that has kept him off the playing field for almost a month. “What I wanted to be at is one hundred percent, I needed a month to recover, I didn’t play in the second leg against Barça and Juan did very well. It’s never nice to be away, but we are a team, there are not only 11 of us on the field. It doesn’t matter whether we’re on or off, we do what we have to do,” he added.

For the Slovenian, “it is always special to play for this club”, regardless of the game, although the Champions League “is a special competition for everyone.” “You always feel incredibly good when you have to put on this shirt and play. That’s what I’m always telling younger people, because when you’re younger you think that every year you’re going to have more opportunities and that’s not the case, many years have passed since the last semifinal,” he said.

In that sense, the Slovenian feels “very happy” with the moment the Madrid entity is going through. “We are where we are and we continue with our options in the Champions League, so we are really looking forward to the game, not just me, but the entire team. We will do everything possible and impossible to get through,” he said.

But he does not believe that football owes Atlético de Madrid an ‘Orejona’. “I don’t see football like that: what should, what shouldn’t; what is fair, what is unfair. In the end, life is not always fair either and if you are going to think like that, each of us is missing a trophy. I don’t think that is like that, it is this season, we are alive, we have options to be able to fight for it and that is the most beautiful and the most important thing,” he noted.

“The pressure will always be there, that does not change. If it is the semi-finals of the Champions League, if it is the first match in the League, if it is the first round of the Cup… in the end what the team always seeks is to win,” praised Jan Oblak, who emphasizes that the team faces this tie “with great enthusiasm.” “I’m happy that we can compete for it and we’re going to compete. Now let everyone do their part, give the best version and only in this way can great things be achieved,” he commented.

Like Oblak, Pablo Barrios and José María Giménez are not having the best season with injuries that have kept them off the playing field. “It’s the most difficult thing, but they always contribute. Giménez has been here for a long time and is contributing a lot when he can’t be with us on the field. The truth is that Pablo is having very bad luck, he has had what happened to him with another injury in the last game, but I am sure that he will recover well and that makes him stronger. He is the future of this club,” he stressed.