Jorge Jesus: “I showed Buschan: now you can wallow on the ground as much as you want. At least for an hour"

The head coach of the Turkish Fenerbahce Jorge Jesus summed up the results of his team's yesterday's match with Dynamo Kyiv (2:1) in the 1st round of the Europa League group stage.

“In the first half, Dynamo wanted to stop us with tactical fouls. By the 10th minute of the match, they committed 8 violations of the rules, and their goalkeeper began to play for time already at the 25th minute of the match. If you really want to play, this shouldn't happen. I don’t know how football is played in Ukraine, but football players shouldn’t behave like this.

However, my team fought to the end to win this match. My players fully used all their technical and tactical capabilities. And, in the end, we deservedly achieved our goal.

We scored both goals today as a result of set pieces. We are working hard on this element of the game. Salai and Enrique are tall and play well with their heads. We knew that both of them could create problems for the opponent at set pieces. We've been working on this all week. And matches are always like a test of how well you prepared for certain positions. And today Enrique's play at set pieces has become a decisive factor for us.

Lucescu's statement (The head coach of Dynamo after the match compared the match with a bullfight, accused Fenerbahce of a rough game and refused to answer questions from the media — ed.)? I have great respect for this specialist. He has long proved his quality as a coach. But I can give him the following advice: he can study the statistics of the match and see how many fouls the players on his team committed. Our medical team entered the field 8 times. I don't know how Lucescu watched the match, but I think he analyzed it badly.

I respect Lucescu's opinion, but I do not agree with what was said in his statement. Dynamo constantly tried to stop the Fenerbahce players with fouls, especially in the first half hour. In addition, their goalkeeper was constantly on the ground to play time. As I said, I don't know how Lucescu looks at the match, but I respect his opinion. He has his opinion, I have mine, but when he looks at the statistics, he will see that he is wrong.

I didn't talk to Lucescu, I didn't even see him after the match. But if I knew what he said, I still wouldn't talk to him about it. I can understand Lucescu, his team had to play very aggressively to stop Fenerbahce today. That's why our opponents committed foul after foul, many times in a row. This was the strategy they chose. And the judge indulged it.

Each coach has his own strategies. Lucescu apparently decided that this foul approach was the best way for his team in today's match. I have no comments on this topic. But my opinion is the exact opposite of Lucescu's. Dynamo committed more than 20 fouls during the entire match. I had to adapt to this situation in order to catch the balance in the match. That is exactly what we did. In the first half, Dynamo had no chance at all to get close to our goal. And in general, the opponent defended throughout the entire match. It's okay because we made them do it. We got a well-deserved victory. We are reaping the fruits of our hard work. Our organization on the field was good.

In the Champions League qualification, we played against Dynamo and were sure that we could beat this opponent. But you know what happened then. Therefore, today we wanted to answer "Dynamo". And we made it our victory. We have shown that we are as strong a team as Dynamo Kyiv. The clear favorites of our group are Dynamo and Rennes, not Fenerbahce. Because Fenerbahce has lost the strong image it had in Europe in recent years. Our first goal is to fix it. We want to return this image again. We know that we have a chance to get out of this group, and we will work hard for this.

Dynamo has been playing in the same squad for many years. They are very well protected. Over the past year and a half, I have already played five matches with this team, and I know the quality of their defensive organization. It's not easy to play against them. But my players showed themselves well today, and their actions at set pieces became a decisive factor.

What did I show Buschan at the end of the match? With a gesture of my hand, I said to him: “Now you can roll on the ground as much as you want. If you want, lie down for at least an hour. I wanted to let him know that these actions of his don't matter anymore. Modern football is a game in which the defensive organization of the team must be excellent. But there is no need to go for the moves that Dynamo used today during 90 minutes of the game. These are no longer used in Europa League level tournaments. This can only be seen in second-rate or third-rate tournaments.

Buschan is a very good goalkeeper. But neither he nor Dynamo Kyiv need to make such moves. You have to respect the game and the fans," Jesus said at the post-match press conference.