MILAN, Italy - Lille coach Rudi Garcia was in an upbeat mood despite his team's 2-1 defeat at Inter Milan, which left it bottom of its Champions League group.

Lille has just two points from four games in the group and is three points behind both CSKA Moscow and Trabzonspor, with Inter now unreachable at the top of Group B.

And yet if it wins both its remaining games, it will qualify for the knock-out rounds.

"Two wins are not just necessary but will also be sufficient and that's good news," said Garcia. "What we lacked was the ability to accelerate in the last 30 yards, but that's not surprising because we played three days ago and Inter played 24 hours earlier.

"That didn't put us in the best condition," said the Frenchman.

But Garcia admitted there could be no doubt who was the better side after goals from Walter Samuel and Diego Milito proved too much for the French champion despite Tulio De Melo's late consolation.

"We've played two matches against Inter and had two defeats. It's one step too far even though we did the same match (as them). We're too slow, we're not effective enough, we didn't respect our marking plan and Inter went 1-0 in front. They love leading.

"We had a plan to let them come at us so we would have more space to exploit but I didn't see enough effort to search for the spaces and get forward when it was still 0-0.

"De Melo's entrance (from the bench) gave us presence on the pitch because without him we could cross balls into the box all night in the air without ever winning one."

Now Garcia's focus is very much on the coming clashes.

"We're capable of being better than the teams in the second and fourth pools (Lille were in the third) but we have to win in Moscow," he said. "Our destiny is still in our own hands, it won't be easy but it's what we have to do if want to get to the knock-out rounds."

Agence France-Presse

(China Daily 11/04/2011 page22)