Dynamo Kyiv midfielder Oleksandr Karavaev named the reasons for the unsuccessful performance of his team in the first half of the season.
Alexander Karavaev“After the Champions League qualification, we were exhausted by about 60-70 percent. We especially felt it after the matches with Benfica. Very difficult, strong opponent. Maybe we weren't ready for it. After all, before that we passed two other difficult opponents ("Fenerbahce", and "Sturm", - ed.), and even with extra time. And we didn’t have enough strength for a third, and even such a strong opponent.
It broke us. We thought the championship would start and everything would pass, but it turned out the other way around - as if everything had gone like a snowball. Defeat on defeat. This additionally hit us psychologically.
We can say that Benfica has become for us the moral barrier that broke us. If this opponent had come across to us in the first round of the Champions League qualification, then, probably, there would have been a different result and a different game - we were not yet exhausted then. But Benfica came across to us when we had already given a lot of strength. It was very difficult to take this last step,” Karavaev said in a FootballHub comment.
