Rafa Benítez, SSC Napoli head coach, acknowledged that his team had paid for their own mistakes both in the first and the second leg and congratulated their rivals for their win. In the press room at San Mamés after their elimination by Athletico Bilbao in the Champions League play off (1-1 draw at the San Paolo and then a 3-1 defeat away) he took a practical stance and warned that despite the enormous disappointment they have to think about the future and above all on the next game, the opener for the Neapolitans in the Serie A this coming weekend.

He began by recognising the feelings felt inside the club, the technical team and the players... "We are hugely disappointed with the way everything has turned out especially as we are now out of the competition. In all seriousness, ethically and professionally we need to look towards the future, we have a game this coming weekend and we must look forward, be prepared, even if what has happened hurts. That’s football, although it is hard we need to learn to accept this as part of the learning process which we have spoken of many times" explained the Spanish coach and continued his analysis by stating..."objectively after having scored the goal that put us ahead in this second leg it is clear that the most difficult part was already done in the beginning of the second half, a key moment of the game. The problem as I see it was that at a critical point of the game we made some absolutely decisive mistakes which made qualifying impossible. We paid for own mistakes not just in the home game when we did not make the most of some of the clear chances we had but also in the away leg with those errors that led to Athletico 's goals, this condemned us irremissibly. He continued with his analysis of the game, "they got great confidence when they scored the equalizer, when they should have been going through a more difficult period, this made our options very difficult. Despite everything, we tried to win in every possible way but a second mistake took us out of the game. He also said "clearly we had spent the whole week training hard to prepare for the game, set plays were specially prepared but we still conceded from a corner when we knew the importance of set plays in this game. But we have to accept it as soon as possible with as much normality as we can despite the great disappointment. Evidently this forms part of football, we all have to understand and accept that and congratulate Athletico Bilbao for what they have achieved and think about our next game. This game is now only useful as an analysis of the errors we have committed".

When speaking about the circumstances of the game Rafa insisted that "if it had been them who had scored first then we would be talking about a different game altogether". Later he continued, "it is clear that we should have managed our options and strengths in a better way throughout the game. It is exactly there where we have committed the greatest mistake. But now I repeat, we have to think about our first Serie A game. Obviously we are all disappointed but we have to pick ourselves up after this defeat and look to our future objectives".

When asked later about SSC Napoli´future and the Neapolitan project after being eliminated from Champions League he firmly replied "this is something we have explained in various occasions. We knew that this Champions League play off was going to be extremely difficult, once again we weren ́t lucky in the draw. That ́s the way it is. We are very sad about this result but we have to think about the future and what has happened cannot take our energies away from focusing on the rest of our objectives. We have a strong group that will continue to grow and work hard during the whole season, in all the competitions in which we are involved" concluded the 'azzurro' head coach.