Aleksandr Karavaev: "Polesie" played well against us, and we, probably, were not ready for it"

Kyiv Dynamo and Ukraine national team midfielder Oleksandr Karavaev commented on the recent defeat of his team from Zhytomyr Polesya (2:3) in the 10th round of the Ukrainian championship, his suspension in this meeting and also touched upon the VAR topic.

About the defeat by Polesya

- When you lead 2:1, play in the majority, but in the end you lose, it is not that it is not peculiar to Kyiv Dynamo - it cannot happen at all. With all due respect to "Polesie". This is a very good team with experienced players, which is a fighting team, aimed at fighting for high places. I think, everyone has already seen what kind of infrastructure "Polesie" has and at what pace this club is developing. Few people do such things in Ukraine, especially in times like now.

"Polesie" played well against us, and we probably were not ready for it. It is necessary for each of our team to "dig" in themselves, to reconsider their attitude, to understand what they want in general. Kyiv Dynamo has a glorious history and always fights only for the first place. In any tournament. Therefore, it cannot be that we outplay our rival in all aspects and then just give up. Everyone who comes to Dynamo should give more to work, progress even more than it was in the previous clubs. And everything should be done without mistakes, because at this level they are simply not forgiven.

Of course, such a defeat can bring down anyone. We will have to get together before the next game and talk, so that there is no emotional pit, so that no one dwells on this failure, because there are a lot of matches ahead of us. We will have a lot of chances to make things right. Everything depends on us. Yes, now we lost, everyone is "hating" us, we understand why, and we can "hate" ourselves. But the good thing is there's always the next match. Unless we are talking about the final. There are a lot of matches ahead, in which we can correct the situation and avoid repeating mistakes.

About your suspension in the match with "Polesie".

- I was surprised. When the referee showed me a red card, I approached him and he said: "You understand, spikes near the opponent's face is always a red card". But I never want to bring pain to anyone on the football field - there is no such thing in me. I was always taught like this: "You eat one bread. And if you seek to injure someone, it may eventually happen to you."

In that episode we controlled the ball, I was passing, I saw that I could stop the ball with my foot, I lifted it and at that moment the "Polesie" player. He also wanted to play the ball, I understand him, but my foot was already there and I could not take it away. But if you watch the final moment of the episode, you can see that I did not do anything with my foot and even tried to take it away.

I agree that it was a red card. But pay attention that the referee first showed me a yellow card, because he saw that I did not play intentionally, because he saw that the opponent played "at me". But then - blood on my face, VAR and a change of decision. In the picture, any such episode can look awful. Like, for example, the recent moment with Rakitskiy. It was purely a game moment: he "rolled" by inertia and slightly caught the opponent's supporting leg, but before that he played the ball. And only after VAR Rakitskiy was given a red card.

About the attitude to VAR

- We must realise that we are always moving forward, always developing. And without the current technologies there will definitely be no football. VAR will not be cancelled. But we need to improve this technology. For example, if an episode with an offence is purely playful and does not look terrible through the eyes of a person who is nearby, why review it? There are a lot of questions about VAR right now.

Text transcript - Dynamo.kiev.ua, when using the material hyperlink is mandatory!