On Sunday, 1 October, Dynamo Kyiv defeated Oleksandriya 4-2 in the match of the 9th round of the Ukrainian championship season-2023/24. The meeting took place in Kyiv at the Dynamo stadium named after Valeriy Lobanovskiy. Here is the post-match press conference of the teams' head coaches.
Mircea Lucescu. Photo - Y.YurievMircea LUCHEU, Dynamo head coach:
- How serious was Vanat's injury that caused him to miss the last match, and how much did it prevent him from playing today?
- He had a minor injury. He has been training in the general group for the last two days. So we had time to assess how ready he was to take the field today.
- It is already the third match this season Dynamo ends with a 4:2 victory. Do you see any regularity in it?
- Our problem is that we concede a lot. We concede after standard positions, after elementary mistakes. We need to work better on these moments. But we also score a lot. Today we started the match well and finished it well. In the middle of the game, the pace was a little bit different from what we would like to see.
Now there are no quality foreigners coming to our championship, and many players of our clubs are moving to European championships. All this has led to the fact that in general in the Ukrainian championship the teams are at about the same level. Therefore, it is difficult to play with everyone: everyone wants to score, everyone wants to win, everyone is very motivated.
The Ukrainian championship is held without quality foreigners, and we see that every team can beat any opponent, and vice versa. This applies to everyone. Therefore, today's victory is important for us.
- Does the fact that Shakhtar are not in the best shape now inspire you, and in this sense Dynamo have a chance to take the first place in case of winning results in the rescheduled matches?
- We are not interested in Shakhtar. We are not interested in any other team. We are interested in our game. We had a quality preparation for today's match, that's why we won.
- Do you consider any of the teams you have played against this season as reinforcements?
- If teams have good players in their squads, they will not sell them. Especially, now players from the Ukrainian championship usually go abroad. In this situation it makes sense to pay more attention to the youth. There are a lot of them on the radar now. Even today, Skorko and Shulyanskyi played in "Alexandria" - they are our pupils. In a word, we are not planning to buy anyone from the Ukrainian championship.
Ruslan ROTAN, head coach of "Alexandria":
- It was a difficult match for us. First of all, we congratulate Dynamo on the victory.
In principle, the game was good for us, but we were a bit underwhelmed, and there are objective reasons for that. Without experience we can`t win such matches or at least draw.
- Your team scored two goals to Dynamo after standard positions. Was this your idea?
- We work on this component every week. But today it played a negative role for us: we scored from "standards" and conceded from "standards". We need to work even more. Both on attack and defence.
Руслан Ротань. Фото — Ю.Юрьев- Taking into account the fact that Oleksandriya equalised twice in the match with Dynamo, can we say that the crisis moment for your team is behind us?
- I would not put the question of crisis. The crisis is when the team is playing, but does not show what is required of it. And our team now consists of 60 per cent of 19-year-old players. They need to make a certain number of mistakes to gain experience, to understand what the Premier League is, what is the football that is played here.
So far I have the impression that the guys think that in the UPL there is almost no fight. But it is quite the opposite: there is a lot of fighting in our league compared to other championships. It takes time for the players to realise it. This fight should not be lost at least. Then we can build something in attack and finish the matches calmly.
But such lessons learnt in matches, when the opponent is superior to us, are very useful for young players. We have to work on both tackling and calm play to show what we want to do with the ball. In general, we have a lot of work to do.
- What are the tasks facing "Alexandria" now?
- I can`t answer your question. Now the number one task is to balance the players we have in our team, because 60% of the players of our current squad joined us after the off-season training camp. Some of them have not played for six months, several months. This is really a problem and the number one task for us. When we bring our players to a common denominator, then we can set new tasks.
Oleksandr POPOV from the Dynamo Stadium named after Valeriy Lobanovskiy
