"Napoli is the most important match of the season"

Villarreal striker Roberto Soldado has expressed his satisfaction at the way Villarreal’s season is going and described the upcoming Europa League clash with Napoli at El Madrigal as the “most important of the season.”

“It’s going to be an exciting tie against one of the strongest teams in the Italian League, a very tough opponent, and in a competition in which we have placed a lot of hopes on doing something special,” Soldado said.

Soldado also said that claiming all three points in Saturday’s match against Málaga was important to maintain the side’s recent run and Villarreal’s advantage over their rivals in the battle for the Champions League places.

“Now we’ve got a run of difficult games coming up and winning this game has given us a lot of confidence going into them. In the second half of the season nobody gives anything away for free and every game is tricky. Against Málaga we fought hard for the victory, as we do in every game. They pushed [for an equalizer] seeing that the score was close and that might have caused us to doubt ourselves,” he added.

“Maybe what we lack is finishing games off,” Soldado noted, despite the flowing attacking football of the team. “If we translated that into goals, we’d be able to kill off games more easily.”

Soldado scored the only game of the game against Málaga to bring to end his run of almost 800 minutes in the league without finding the back of the net. Soldado has chalked up nine assists in Primera this season but explained that “personally maybe I’ve changed my mentality a little” after a chat with Marcelino, who said that Soldado should try and be more incisive.

“He told me that I had to try and shoot more often and not look to pass the ball so much. Now I’m doing that and hopefully I can continue to hit the target.”