It's not easy to represent a team that hasn't been able to win a championship for 63 years. Furthermore, it can't be easy to promise you can go all the way when your club hasn't earned a spot in the semifinals since 1999, but Chilean midfielder Rodrigo Millar is confident his team can beat every statistic and finally give their fans a much needed joy after years avoiding relegation.
"I think we are a better team than the last time we made it to the playoffs a year and a half ago. We display better skills with the ball and we have different ways to hurt our opponents, but we know that the playoffs have to be played differently. Even so, we think we can be considered a solid candidate to win the title, and the first step will have to be defeating a tough team like Monterrey," Millar stated.
"El Chino" is confident Atlas will have learned from their previous mistakes, given that Monterrey managed to defeat them 2-1 when they met during the regular season. With that in mind, Millar urges his team-mates to be especially aware of the rival's counter attacks.
"Of course we want to win both games, but if we are not playing that well and we are even, then that's not a bad result for us. We have to be intelligent and be patient, because last time we played at Tecnologico we had a bad experience," Millar added.
Atlas will play the first leg on Thursday, and will finish their series at home on Sunday.
