Plea: "A perfect evening for us all"

After beating Shakhtar Donetsk 6-0-in Ukraine, Alassane Plea spoke briefly about his hat-trick and the Foals’ strong showing.

Lasso, after the two draws with Inter Milan and Real Madrid, you picked up your first three points in the Champions League yesterday. How did you achieve this outstanding victory?

Plea: We’d actually already made steps towards winning the first two matches. Those two games showed us that we can mix it with even the best teams. Yesterday, we were focused from the very start and managed to concentrate for the whole match. We were quick into the tackles and had some good, direct attacks which we were able to convert into goals. It couldn’t have gone any better for us.

You made your mark with three goals last night. What do you make of the victory and of your own personal achievement?

Plea: It was a perfect evening for us all. I’m obviously really pleased with my goals, but as a striker you can only achieve something like this with a strong team behind you, so my thanks go to my teammates. Only they made it possible for me to score this hat-trick.

The fixtures are coming thick and fast right now. There aren’t any signs of fatigue, though...

Plea: There really are a lot of games at the moment, but we have a good team and a big squad so that we can rotate without any issues, without losing any quality. We have had a good season so far and we want to keep that going. There’s another tough game up next, against Leverkusen on Sunday. We want to be successful in that game before we head into the international break, when we can recover a little and recharge the batteries.