Juan Carlos Garrido was a happy man after marking his 50th match in charge of Villarreal with a victory over Real Zaragoza that he considers "key" to their hopes of playing UEFA Champions League football last season.
Giuseppe Rossi netted the only goal of the game with a 71st-minute penalty as Villarreal bounced back from successive league defeats to Barcelona and Valencia to further strengthen their hold on fourth place. The Yellow Submarine are now nine points in front of fifth-placed Athletic Bilbao and, with only six games to go, they are within touching distance of a top-four finish for only the third time in their history.
Garrido, who has enjoyed an impressive start to his career at El Madrigal since replacing Ernesto Valverde just over 12 months ago and this season has led the club into the Europa League semi-finals, said: "I'm very happy. On a personal level, it's nice (reaching 50 games), altough my aim is to have many more games with Villarreal.
"It's nice to celebrate it with a victory. We know that by competing in other competitions we haven't picked up as many points as we would have liked, but with this triumph we have moved closer to our objective. As I said before, it was a vital game to keeping intact our intact of finishing in the top four. There aren't many points left to play for. It's a step more, and important step, and although there are several more to take, this victory was key.
"We knew that it was going to be difficult, a victory we were going to have to suffer for, because Zaragoza are a difficult team who are a having a great second half of the season with good players. We had a good first half in which we could have gone into the break with an advantage and in the second, we scored, we suffered, but we worked as hard as possible."