‘We showed our quality and we are going to the knockouts from a good start’

In the first, terribly difficult and painful, two months of the season, he was the one who kept Panathinaikos upright in the big challenges with valuable goals and assists, but above all with his class, being a reference point of the “green” attack and the most influential player of the group.

From the October 27th match against Aris at OAKA, when Mateus Tete (here’s the reason) gave Panathinaikos the lead, there followed almost two months of “silence” with Filip Djuricic taking the “baton” (together with Fotis Ioannidis in the last matches), but on Thursday night (19/12) it was time for… outburst.

Both for Panathinaikos and for the Brazilian “magician”, who sealed with two goals in the second half the qualification of the “clover” in the knockouts of the Conference League, he reached the hat-trick when Rui Vitoria and Ioannidis “gave him ” the penalty he won himself from Lopez, but failed to beat Lapukhov from white bullet and he did… priests inside the playing area, together with the other artist Azedin Unai.

The 25-year-old ace spoke to SPORT24 for this famous “breakout” that Panathinaikos was looking for, for the confirmation of the quality of the “green” roster and the competitive development of the team, underlining that the “clover” is now entering the Conference League knockouts from a very good starting point , which will be a completely different… story.

“I am really very happy for the fact that I scored these two goals and I thank God for giving me the opportunity to help my team in this very important game.

The team played very well and deserved to get this win, with a big score and to secure a place in the knockouts of the Conference League.

It’s important that we had the opportunity to show what a good team we are and to be able to continue to the next round, staying within all of our goals.” were his first words -surrounded by countless kids asking for photos and autographs- Tete.

At the same time, he was very confident and full of confidence for the future: “We closed this phase of the Conference League in the best way, with the victories we needed and we got them with good football and a very serious image as a team. Now, when the European games start again in February, we go into a completely different situation.

From now on, the organization changes and moves on to knockout matches, and there are very different things you have to claim, having a home and an away match. It is good that in the first knockout round we will have the game here, at our ‘home’. However, we achieved our first goal in Europe and we can now be a little calmer. Because it was important to take this game against Dynamo Minsk and go from a good start to the knockouts. We continue with great optimism for what will come from here on…”.

“All the players gave their best”

As for his own “return” to goals and big performances? “To score two goals in such an important game is something that makes me very happy. It’s something I wanted. I couldn’t hit the penalty and score another one, but that’s okay. The most important thing is that we won and above all that we played really, really well.

The whole team, all the players gave their best. We scored very nice goals and showed our quality. And that is the most important thing. We are in a very good period, we have become a very strong group and we are moving forward to become even better…”.