Shakhtar's head coach Ihor Jovicevich commented on the decision to postpone the matches of the Ukrainian Championship in order to better prepare for the Champions League group stage games.
— One more question about the Champions League. In the fifth round, Shakhtar played away draw with Celtic and guaranteed themselves the European spring. Don't you think that after that the team experienced a psychological decline?
- Everything is possible. This is possible due to lack of experience and some game situations that we have not gone through before. This is the human factor. We have a young team, and we gave the maximum. We fought for the country, for Ukraine, for soldiers, for our families, for fans - for the first time in our lives, we had trials of this level.
When you see that the goal is close, it's like in a sprint: with Celtic it turned out like with a 100-meter race - we ran it and exhaled. Maybe that's exactly what happened. This should be a lesson for our future and only benefit us. We would not have survived against such a Celtic if we had not postponed the game with Minay,” I say frankly. We would not have survived the last 20 minutes as Celtic sat down and we continued to play and could even win if Sikan scored and we brought the game to win. I thank Minai, their president, for this concession.
But I would like to do the same with Dynamo and Dnipro-1 before important European matches, since the price of odds is very high for the future of Ukrainian football. Before Leipzig, we played a battle to the death against Alexandria in the minority, although we have not yet recovered from Celtic. This worries me as a coach.
Yes, we did not pass Leipzig, although we gave our all. They had a new coach, the team improved in organization, they were focused and looked better. But we were not in optimal physical shape either: the hard game and the road from Glasgow had an effect, and we ourselves felt how tired we were. Not only a matter of bad luck, but also fatigue after the game with Oleksandriya, where there was still an air raid alert. And this is how we approached the most important match in Shakhtar's new history. But this is not how they prepare for the most important matches.
I can't understand this, because the match could have been rescheduled and nothing would have happened. And such important matches for the coefficients of Ukraine, like the duel with Leipzig, are very rare. Especially when you are on such a move, you have already shown a lot, the whole world was talking about us, we demonstrated top football - well, give us a little help.
It is impossible to play such an important match with Leipzig after such a battle with Oleksandriya. We still don't manage emotions and football as well as Modric, Kroos and Casemiro can. We do not have such experience and so many games where we can manage fatigue.