Former striker of Karpaty and the national team of Ukraine Taras Kabanov told Team1 which helped Oleksandr Petrakov’s wards achieve such a convincing victory and assessed their chances in the fight for a ticket to the elite division of the League of Nations.
Taras Kabanov— To be honest, I expected more resistance from the hosts. After all, I remember that in the first match of these teams in Poland, the Armenians, despite three goals conceded, were not whipping boys. Yesterday, having missed the second time, they threw out the white flag. Although it must be admitted that our guys acted exemplarily after the break, skillfully changing the direction of attacks and depriving the hosts of control over the ball.
— Did you expect that after the fiasco in the missed match with the Scots in Glasgow, the head coach of the Ukrainian national team Oleksandr Petrakov would carry out such a massive rotation in Yerevan?
- Not. It could be assumed that only Ilya Zabarny, Vitaly Mikolenko and Andrey Lunin would appear at the start. But the participation from the first minutes of Taras Kacharaba, Alexander Zubkov, Alexander Tymchik, Danil Ignatenko came as a surprise to me. Nevertheless, it seemed that Petrakov would throw into battle those players who failed the duel in Glasgow, so that they would believe in their strength in competition with a weak opponent. The helmsman decided otherwise and made the right decision. Tymchik, Zubkov, Ignatenko scored, and Lunin and Kacharaba took care not to miss (smiles).
— However, in fairness, it should be said that in the first half the advantage of the guests was not so obvious. How can this be explained?
- I think that at first there was a corny lack of teamwork, because our team played in such a composition for the first time. First of all, there were problems with the implementation, it was far from always possible to quickly switch from defense to attack, and the hosts had time to rebuild and eliminate threats. You know, the most annoying thing for me is that Roman Yaremchuk left the field again without his scored goal. I was sure that yesterday he would break his already long goalless streak. Downed sight Yaremchuk worries.
— It looks like Roman should take an example from his stand-in Artem Dovbik, who, having come on as a substitute, quickly scored a double and with this argument can convince Petrakov that he deserves a place at the start in the final confrontation with the Scots on September 27...
- Let's not guess. A few days ago, Dovbik already played with the Scots and did not hit anything. And do not forget that in Yerevan he appeared on the field when the fate of the fight had already been decided. I am glad that Petrakov still has time to weigh everything and not make a mistake in his choice. Moreover, there is a certain uncertainty with several more positions.
Nevertheless, now the main thing is that our guys recover properly after a long flight from Armenia to Poland, and then seriously work on the mistakes that they made recently in Glasgow. In particular, how not to act when playing set pieces at your own goal, having conceded twice in fairly simple situations. In my opinion, in Krakow, the Ukrainian national team has every chance to take revenge on the British and prove that the Blue-and-Yellows were not accidentally considered the favorite of the group.
Vasil MIKHAILOV
