On Saturday, 14 October, the Ukrainian national team will play a Euro 2024 qualifying match against North Macedonia. The match is nominally a home game for the Ukrainian national team, but due to the war will be held in Prague. A day before the game, a pre-match press conference of the head coach of the North Macedonia national team Blagoj Milevski was held at the Epet Arena stadium, which will host this meeting.
Blagoja Milevski. Photo - A.Popov- What impression did the Ukraine national team leave on you from the September matches against England and Italy?
- No words are needed to understand how high the level of the Ukraine national team is. We all know that this team has qualified and strong players who play in the top leagues.
But you should also realise that the level of the North Macedonian national team is constantly growing, and we have already shown that we can play against top teams at a good level. We confirmed this in the matches against Italy and Malta. I hope that we will have enough energy to play at the same level in the remaining matches of this qualification.
- What is the personnel situation in your team before tomorrow's match?
- Except for the injured Zaikov, all the players are healthy. After today's training we will have a final understanding of the condition of our players.
- In the first match against Ukraine, your team won 2:0, but then lost 2:3. What conclusions did you draw from that game?
- You can`t compare that match and tomorrow`s match. I am sure that tomorrow will be a completely different game. Both Ukraine and North Macedonia are now fighting for second place in our qualifying group. So tomorrow each team will need three points.
I hope that there will be an open game, and both teams will fight for victory and three points. In order to win tomorrow, we need, first of all, to be concentrated, focused and, most importantly, not to stop after 60-65 minutes of the game, to continue playing our football.
- After the first match against Ukraine, you said that there were anomalies with your team in the second half. Could you clarify what exactly was meant?
- We have analysed that match and made conclusions. There were some anomalies in our game in the first half, when the score was 2-0 in our favour. And you saw what happened to us in the second half. This led to a negative result for us. Tomorrow we will do everything we can to prevent this from happening again.
Alexander POPOV from Prague
