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Paraguay striker Roque Santa Cruz has stated that his club team, Malaga, were unfortunate not to come away with a point from the recent match against Real Sociedad. After going through a lot of financial troubles in recent years, Malaga are slowly rebuilding and looking to get out of the relegation dogfight.

They are currently just one place above the relegation zone with only three points separating them from it. A point would have been extremely good in these circumstances, but they were able to get only a 1-0 defeat against their Champions league places chasing opponents.

Real Sociedad are only four points below the final Champions league qualifying places. Even though this was a home match, Malaga were unable to take point. Santa Cruz, though, feels that his team deserved a point for the effort that they put into the match. Former Arsenal striker Carlos Vela scored the only goal of the match in the 10th minute after an assist from José Ángel. Even though Real Sociedad were able to play this victory, it was Malaga who created the much opportunities in the match. They had eight shots on target compared to only two from the away team.

Santa Cruz says that Malaga would have won the match on any other day given the dominance they had in the encounter.
“It never sits well with us when we lose a game, particularly when we could have taken advantage of a slow start and the goal opportunities we had in the first half.

However I think we were unlucky, and the rival keeper was extremely fortunate to save a number of promising shots at goal. We lacked a bit of confidence when it came to goal chances, but I think on the whole we performed well. I hope we learn from this game and start every match now with more intensity,” said Santa Cruz.

Paraguay are reportedly in talks with former Republic of Ireland manager Giovanni Trapattoni about taking charge of their national team. The Italian is currently out of work after leaving the Ireland job a few months ago.

It has been reported that the national team is currently dissatisfied with the work done by Victor Genes. He has largely been inconsistent during his spell as the Paraguay manager, which is forcing the nation to take proper steps in order to do well in the next World Cup qualifying campaign. They failed to qualify for the World Cup 2014 despite this competition being held in South America.

Paraguay are no strangers to appoint Italian managers after Cesare Maldini was in charge of them almost a decade ago. Maldini managed to get them to the World Cup 2002. Genes is coming under a lot of pressure especially after a poor World Cup qualifying in which they finished bottom of the group. They could manage only 12 points from the 16 matches. Despite being 74 years old, Trapattoni is thought to have set to his friends and family that he has no intention of retiring from management just yet.

Trapattoni was replaced by former Leicester City manager Martin O’Neill, who has also been accompanied by Robbie Keane. Trapattoni’s time at Ireland has been met with a lot of criticism in recent months after the team failed to qualify for the World Cup, but they did manage to make an appearance at the Euro 2012.

Even then, he failed to win over the supporters since Ireland were knocked out of the tournament after not managing a single victory in the group stages. The embarrassing defeats against the likes of Spain also counted against Trapattoni, as he was finally relieved of his duties a few months ago.