Niko Kovac Said His Team 'Played Their Best' as They Comfortably Secured CL Promotion

Niko Kovac has sung the praises of his Bayern Munich side after they secured their path to the last 16 of the Champions League with a 5-1 victory over Benfica.

Braces from Arjen Robben and Robert Lewandowski, as well as a late strike from Franck Ribery, did the damage as Bayern put their recent poor form behind them to comfortably brush aside a very lacklustre Benfica.

TF-Images/GettyImages

Kovac, who has been under an increasing amount of pressure after a disappointing run of results, claimed that everything fell into place on the night.

"We defended well and took our chances at the other end." Kovac said, as per Goal.

"We finally managed to maintain a high performance level throughout the full 90 minutes.

"It may sound strange, but when we play in the Champions League or in the big league games, you can see that my team is capable, but when we come up against the slightly smaller teams, we sometimes don't play to our full strengths.

"We need to play to our best for 90 minutes, as we did today."

Alexander Hassenstein/GettyImages

Ribery was one of the stars of the show on the night and his goal was his first of the season for Bayern. Kovac was happy to single him out for praise and suggested that the goal was the least he deserved for his efforts so far this season.

"He was finally able to reward himself," Kovac told reporters.

"Franck works very hard on the pitch and brings his team-mates into the game. Today he scored, and he earned that."