Vyacheslav Fridman: "Dnipro would have survived if it had won the Europa League"

Dnipro-1 Commercial Director Viacheslav Fridman shared his opinion on the fate of Dnipro after the Europa League final against Sevilla in an interview with the Dniproyn telegram channel

- What does Dnipro's success mean to you personally? What was the reason for your success?

- Firstly, the selection of players, they were all quality performers. Rotan, Mateus, three strikers, it happened that there was no place for Kalinich, Seleznev or Zozulya. Remember that Kravchenko also had no place in the squad. On the bench were those people who would have been consistently starting in other teams. Secondly, of course, there was luck somewhere. I really don't like the phrase about Kolomoisky in Warsaw, or rather the reaction to it (I'm talking about the famous phrase of the CPI: "You shouldn't have been in this final")

- This is the next question.

- It was not true, because I personally witnessed it, stood nearby, and heard everything. He meant that you shouldn't have played if it wasn't for the referee's mistake in the match between Inter and Karabakh. He wasn't referring to the players' skills or any other personal indicators, but to the fact that we got here by chance. We watched that match a hundred times afterwards and there really was no violation, it was a clean goal. He meant it, but it was blown out of proportion. Denisov repeated this somewhere else, which is why I recently got into a verbal altercation with him because of a misinterpretation of the context. Maybe at the time Markevych thought that his work was somehow underestimated, but it wasn't. It was an absolutely ridiculous interpretation on the part of the journalists and some of those present.

- So you agree with this phrase?

- Yes, it was true, but what he meant was that you have really achieved great success, you have achieved this result, but you shouldn't forget what got you here in the first place, what made you lucky when you left the group. I asked him again afterwards to make sure I really understood the meaning just in case.

- Was Markevich and the players offended by that?

- It was wrong, a misinterpretation out of some kind of anger. Of course, we were all upset then, there was such a chance, the score was 2-2, a goal in the dressing room. We thought we would push them in the second half, but everyone knows how it ended.

- If Dnipro had won the final then, would it have saved the team, do you think?

- I think most likely yes, we would have received big prize money and some players would not have left. I don't remember if winning the final secured a place in the Champions League for the next season.

- No, it didn't, because at that time Sevilla played in this tournament every year, without going to the Champions League.

- I still think it would have saved the team. But Dnipro did not collapse because of this, there was fatigue, the players did not want to take a salary of less than a million when signing new contracts, absolutely everyone wanted a million and a half. Later, when they were released, life showed that no one could secure such contracts. They were just mocking us when we were renegotiating the contracts. The case of Konoplyanka comes to mind. He called me recently, we talked about it. He said he was sure that at that time they were offering 15 million for him.

We could have extended the contract then, as we have done with Dovbyk now, quietly and peacefully, and then sold him, but he was not content to sit still, he wanted to leave abruptly. Yes, Artem also wanted to leave, but we came to an agreement with him, sold him and the team made money. And when such players leave and the team is left with nothing, it is also wrong.

It's really very difficult when you manage a team, understand the needs of the players, and each of them has a crown on their head, so it's very difficult to work with them. Everyone thinks that everyone owes them something, big salaries, big bonuses. Even now, we (Dnipro-1) have huge salaries, and in Kryvbas they say that no one has more than ten thousand, they earn it through bonuses. But this doesn't mean that we have a bad story to say that Dnipro-1 doesn't pay their salaries and so on, it's just a different system.