The head coach of Zhytomyr's Polissya Yuriy Kalytyntsev assessed his team's performance in the first part of this season (third place after 17 rounds of the Ukrainian Championship with 32 points).
Yuri Kalitvintsev- "We had a short period before the start of the season, a lot of new players appeared, but thanks to the fact that the guys were very motivated and during each training session they tried to learn. So every day, even if it was a small step, we were moving forward. This is thanks to their attitude to the team they joined.
The best motivation is the desire to achieve a positive result together. I said this in my first interview when I came to this club - I guarantee that there will be no indifferent people here. Regardless of how many minutes a player is on the pitch, they are all ready to fight for each other and do everything to achieve a result. We were 'hungry' and we stayed 'hungry'. We are very motivated.
I don't remember being called leaders directly. I heard only one thing - that we have no game and nothing. But the team has only three defeats in 17 games (even more).
What is the quality of the game? This is subjective. We play a professional sport, and no matter what, the result is the most important thing. Ideally, it's the result of a good game. But what is a good game? Some people like one thing, some like another. Some people just don't like our team and say that we played badly, or, let's say, we were lucky somewhere.
But the worse they said about us, the more we were toughened up. We believed in ourselves and knew what we had to do. The most important thing was to look each other in the eye honestly after the game. That's why we weren't distracted by talk about the team at all. We have our own tasks and our own path. And rocking the boat does not lead to good. In a short time, we managed to create a football family. And the conversations did not affect us in any way, we took it calmly. If people are talking about us, it means we are interesting, it means we are competitive, it means we arouse people's interest. This is good, but it did not affect the process in any way.
We need to sum up the results of the championship after the championship. Should we be happy now, should we be sad, should we be happy? We haven't done anything yet. This is an intermediate stage, it's the end of the year, but nothing has been done yet. So should we praise? I always praise when there is something to praise. And now I would praise the team, the players, for their professional attitude to their duties.
