Vladimir Petkovic, the coach of Algeria, believes that his team needed to be ready for the World Cup level.
The Algerian national team exited the World Cup from the round of 32 after losing to Switzerland 2-0 on Friday morning.
Petkovic said in statements to journalists, following the loss to Switzerland: "We defended very well and did not concede many goals before the World Cup started."
He continued, "But here in the tournament, the level was very high, so we needed to be more precise and organized and to adapt more to this level."
The Bosnian-Swiss coach refused to blame the defense, "I cannot blame the defense, but certainly in terms of the way we defended as a team, we paid a high price for that."
He added, "Every time we make our first mistake, we concede a goal."
He continued, "The opponent had three chances and scored two of them, we had more chances than them, but unfortunately, this is the nature of things."
Petkovic sees passing the group stage as an achievement for Algeria: "Just returning to such a competition after a 12-year absence was already a great success. And I believe that passing the group stage for only the second time in our history is also an excellent result."
He concluded, "Of course, we wanted to achieve more, but we couldn't do that. We have to learn from the shortcomings we showed, but we also witnessed a large number of positive moments in the matches."
The Swiss national team will meet the winner of the Colombia and Ghana match in the round of 16.
The Colombia and Ghana teams will meet at 4:30 AM on Saturday in the round of 32 of the World Cup.
