Super Eagles winger Samuel Chukwueze bagged Villarreal’s Man of the Match award despite his side’s 2-0 defeat to Atletico Madrid on Sunday.
It was Chukwueze’s first start in the La Liga since December 6 when he played in Villarreal’s goalless draw against Elche.
Atlectico Madrid came off the back of a mid-week Champions League defeat to Chelsea to earn all three points as Pedraza’s own goal in the 25th minute and Joao Felix’s second-half goal did the damage for Roji Blancos.
The Nigeria international who recently returned from a groin injury, played for the entire duration in the encounter but his contributions were not enough to help the hosts end their seven-game winless run in the league.
Chukwueze completed the most key passes (4), the most dribbles (4) and he also won the most fouls for the Yellow Submarine (5).
After Gerard Moreno, the 21-year-old registered the most shots (3) even though none was on target.
https://twitter.com/VillarrealCF/status/1366156223494582273
Chukwueze will aim to build on Sunday’s outing against Valencia on Friday with the hopes of helping Villarreal end their winless run in La Liga.
Villareal dropped to seventh in the league table with 37 points from 25 matches, 11 points adrift of the Champions League spot but Unai Emery has urged his team not to lose focus after their latest setback.
“We can’t avoid the result. From there, you look at how you want to get a result,” Emery told the club website.
“We put in an extremely complete performance, and we just lacked accuracy in both areas. That’s the path to follow. In the first half, we had a lot to control and we had a few clear chances.
“They scored in an isolated action. In the second half, we started with a few doubts, and then they scored their second. From then on, in the last 30 minutes, we created a lot of chances, but we didn’t take them.
“If you lose like that, you need to look beyond the result. We did a lot of things very well.
“We had control, you could see our ideas and we continue moving forward. We need to be more competitive in a few details throughout the 90 minutes.”
