Tomas Soucek insists West Ham still have it all to play for despite their 2-1 home defeat to Eintracht Frankfurt in the Europa League semi-final first leg on Thursday night.
David Moyes’ side were stunned inside the first minute when Ansgar Knauff gave Frankfurt the lead in the east London club’s first European semi-final for 46 years.
Despite West Ham levelling through Michail Antonio 20 minutes later, the German side take the advantage back home after Daichi Kamada tapped home in the second half, with Soucek admitting his side did not take their chances.
“We had many chances today, we saw that it was possible to go through but we missed these chances and conceded two goals,” the Czech Republic international said.
“We have to suffer from this for the result but still a lot to play (for) in the second leg.”
West Ham overcame a first-leg deficit against Sevilla in the Europa League this season and the 27-year-old believes his team-mates can take confidence from that.
“I think that this is a good thing for us that we have won every time the second leg, so I hope that we can win again. We wanted to win today as well but we saw that it was possible to beat them,” Soucek said.
“I think that we are the better team, we just need to score goals so I am sure that we created many chances today and hopefully we score again.”
The game was marred as West Ham announced they were investigating allegations that two German commentators were attacked in the second half of the match.
Frankfurt hold the advantage and are full of confidence having knocked out European giants Barcelona in the previous round, with goalkeeper Kevin Trapp insisting it was a good performance.
“I think we played very well, it was quite an even game and the second half we dominated a bit more – we were very calm on the ball yet it was a game with high intensity, but every cross was dangerous because they are quite a physical team,” Trapp said.
“We had a bit of luck as well because they hit the crossbar in the end but all over it was a really good performance because we are in a good position.”
