Davis Cup. Yannick Noah: "stay alive to play Sunday"

"We were really far behind. (...) The idea now is to stay alive to play Sunday, but it will be hard, "French captain Yannick Noah admitted Friday after the defeats of Jeremy Chardy and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the first two singles of the final of the Davis Cup against Croatia, Friday in Villeneuve d'Ascq.

Were the Croats too strong?

When you look at the score, and how the game went, they had the upper hand most of the time. From the first game, there was a break away and we had a few chances of playing balls. Maybe in the first game, there were three or four I think ... Every time, they played the way they played and in the end we lost to better players in the first game; on the second match, it was more or less the same. Some break points, always first service on break points ... We never had the slightest opportunity. It was just another level. We lost in a logical way.

Could your players do better?

We tried, but we just lost those first two games against a better team. There are matches, when you are close to winning, whether it is played at one or two points, you can have a huge frustration. There, we were really far behind. In terms of the quality of the services, the level of the quality of the returns, the level of the precision of the games, in terms of the choice of the zones, there are really many things where they were superior to us. It's not like we lost two games in five sets, with chances to win. We have always been very far away. We never saw the finish line. We were always, always, always behind.

Do you really think you can reverse the score?

We must see the reality of things. Maybe we can play a little better, but it's easier to play better against lesser opponents. They dominated us, they beat us. It was right. They beat us. But there are only 2-0, there have been only two matches. The idea now is to stay alive to play Sunday, but it's going to be tough. If there are feelings that cross my mind, I try to put them aside and put from now on all my energy, all our energy to motivate PH (Herbert) and Nico (Mahut). The match looks difficult, but they have a double experience. We always hang on to something until we are completely dead. We always try to hang on to something, always, to the last point.