"We have a good team, that's clear," said Benitez.
"And our team is not old. We have a lot of players who are 23 or 24. The age of the squad is very good when you're thinking about the future of the club.
"Some of the young players will need more time but we have good quality. We won the reserve league last season, so that shows the quality.
"We played badly on Wednesday and lost, and the performance of the team was not good enough. But we know we have some players who are good - it's just the team as a whole did not play well.
"You cannot blame any one player when the team as a whole doesn't do well.
"We used some senior players and they didn't play well either. We used Fernando for 55 minutes and he didn't play well because he needs time after his injury - but nobody talked about that. When the key players also aren't playing well, you can't look at it and blame the young players.
"We have seen the youngsters doing really well in some games, so the future is brilliant for the club."