The defeat at the Bruchwegstadion on Tuesday evening saw City’s UEFA Youth League campaign come to an end in the Round of 16.
Tim Muller fired the hosts ahead early in the first half before an added time Justin Oboavwoduo strike seconds before the interval drew City level.
Philipp Schulz’s spot kick on 52 minutes was too much for City to overcome but the boss said he was pleased by the character his team showed throughout a difficult 90 minutes.
“I think the players’ resilience on how they bounced back from conceding an early goal was impressive,” said Barry-Murphy when asked what stood out in his team’s performance.
“I thought we played well for large parts of the first half and created food chances from stuff that we worked on previously.
“But the second half became difficult because Mainz scored from a breakaway goal and a penalty can be hard to understand why it’s been given.
“And the nature of the game became difficult because there is such high stakes involved for the players and they want to chase the game and I suppose it’s hard for them to stay calm in those situations and that’s a really big learning curve for them in terms of how they progress going forward.”
City dominated possession for large parts of the game which was also reflected in the number of chances the young boys in Blue created.
But sadly it wasn’t meant to be as we fell to our second successive Round of 16 defeat, having lost to Hajduk Split in last season’s competition.
Barry-Murphy, however, believes the hard defeats are vital in the development of City’s Elite Development Squad and their future senior careers.
“It’s very important because they’ve faced a lot of difficult situations this season already and they’ve grown and shown real improvement for every single player,” said Barry-Murphy.
“So this will be a major disappointment to them and I wouldn’t try and play that down because I think it’s very normal because they put so much into it.
“How they react will hopefully be like they always do which is come back and try and get better so that the next time we encounter these situations we are better equipped and better prepared to deal with it and give ourselves a better opportunity of progressing.
“Tonight we just weren’t able to get the result we wanted and at times the performance was good but we would like it to be better and the players will understand that and move forward to try and improve it.”
