This Thursday, November 3, Dynamo Kyiv will play the match of the final, 6th round of the Europa League group stage with Turkish Fenerbahce. The day before the fight in Krakow, Poland, where this meeting will take place, a pre-match press conference was held by the head coach of the Ukrainian team Mircea Lucescu.
Mircea Lucescu. Photo — O.Vasilyeva— We know you well from your work in Turkey, where you have achieved great success. However, you said that you will do everything possible to prevent Fenerbahce from taking first place in the group... How can you comment on this statement? (question from a Turkish journalist)
- When did I say that? I could not say this, in particular, because I know the president and coach of Fenerbahce well. Of course, anything can happen in football, but I didn't say that, it's not true. In addition, I know Turkish journalists very well, I know how they can invent news, provoke and inflame the atmosphere before matches.
- Against Fenerbahce, Dynamo had the largest number of matches this season. Do you think that the people of Istanbul are progressing from match to match?
— Fenerbahce has acquired many very good players with great experience who play for their national teams. They make significant efforts to build a quality team. Istanbul has 25 players of the same level, they do not have a division into the main and reserve teams. All the players are very high-quality and experienced, many of them are about 30 years old. Only Guler and Mor play among the youth.
We have the opposite situation - we have lost important players, we have young players playing. There are five players under the age of 20 in the roster. I think we made a mistake by playing charity games so intensively in the spring. In addition, the collections were busy in their national teams. We started the Champions League qualification very well, but lost to a big team - Benfica, who also had a lot of good transfers. Since the loss to Benfica, our players have begun to lose motivation and points in the championship.
We did not lose matches because the opponents were stronger than us. Individual moments decided everything: in Istanbul they conceded in the last minutes, lost to AEK due to a free-kick, Rennes gave the opponents the ball after mistakes. Our players are in a very difficult situation. Every two days we change cities, stadiums, we don’t have a permanent place for the training process, we don’t see our fans.
We have one goal - to survive in this situation and maintain the best level that can be maintained. One day the war will end, and Dynamo must remain at its level. This is a brand, a club with a great history and victorious traditions.
We occupy the last place in the group, but I think that we do not deserve to be there.
- "Dynamo" faced a problem in the position of the goalkeeper, having lost Buschan and Boyko...
- After the match in Istanbul, we lost Buschan and Shaparenko - two very important players for us. Shaparenko, who is our best player, was out of football for six months.
As for Bushchan, he has already returned and is training with the team. Let's see if he can play, or we will use Neshcheret again. We have a very young team and I'm sure they will be very motivated for this match. The best way to compete with experienced competitors is to be well prepared and informed. Fenerbahce has very experienced, high-quality, capable and fast players. But we are very well aware of the strengths of each opponent in order to level them.
