‘A firm decision has to be made on the play-offs sooner rather than later’
José Romera, skipper of UD Almería, is utterly convinced that they will enter the play-offs
José Romera, captain of the UD Almería, has spoken to the club’s official media to talk about the current situation of the team and has made it clear that ‘the players and clubs who are in the play-off positions are at a distinct disadvantage’ by the fact that no firm decisions have been made for the promotion stage. ‘There are four teams training without knowing what will actually happen. The teams that have qualified during the season believe that, today, we are the most affected because we do not know if we are going to be given the opportunity or what is going to happen,’ he added.
The 32-year-old defender expressed his thoughts: ‘they should care a bit more about the players and clubs and make a decision sooner rather than later.’ Not surprisingly, ten days have gone since the ‘pause’ in the competition, a situation that has led Romera to affirm ‘I think it is not acceptable that there is not a fixed date after ten days.’
In addition, José Romera pointed out ‘It’d be necessary for them to make up their mind and let us know the dates and conditions that we are going to take because each one is doing things for their own sake and there are going to come up more problems.’
Regarding when the play-offs will take place, José Romera shared his belief on the knockout stage: ‘After all the protocol measures that we have carried out for two months, I truly think that it could last one more week, if they do it on neutral ground and just one match. If there were two games, it’d definitely be longer, but it has to be played no matter what.’
Meanwhile, as Romera stated, the UD Almería team are beginning to take José Gomes' ideas as a head coach, causing more ‘intensity in training because we want to do our very best to be on the squad and feeling highly motivated towards the play-off competition.’ The fact is that, as the days go by and dates are expected, tranquillity is back after the two consecutive negative results in PCR. In this sense, the captain has concluded: ’everything is fine now and we can only congratulate Almería for how well the team, coaches and the medical staff are handling things and facing the situation because the truth is that we all are doing fine.’