On Saturday, 25 May, in the final match of the 30th round of the Ukrainian championship Dynamo Kyiv defeated Lviv Rukh with the score 2:1. The match took place in Lviv at the Arena Lviv stadium. Here is the post-match press conference of the teams' head coaches.
Oleksandr Shovkovskiy. Photo — A. PopovOleksandr SHOVKOVSKY, Dynamo head coach:
- I congratulate all the fans on the end of the season. It was not an easy one. The second part of the championship we played, in principle, at a good level. We won 13 out of 16 matches, lost one of them and drew two more. This is a pretty good result. But we, as before, will strive to win every match, that's how I always set the players. It was the same today. We understood that "Rukh" have their own tasks, but we have no right to lose our face in any situation.
- Today we played a lot of players, who during the season did not get much playing time. At the same time Diallo scored a goal. What is his role in the team?
- You have seen that when there were opportunities, we gave Diallo playing time, he came on as a substitute. But today many guys had to play, to give them a chance to prove themselves. And I am grateful to the guys for their professionalism.
It is not easy to go out to play the last match, when it does not decide anything. So I thanked the guys for their attitude and for the work they did in preparation for this match.
At halftime, we made the substitutions that we had originally planned. Tsarenko, unfortunately, missed a lot because of injury. We also let Malysh play, he had a serious injury, surgery, difficult recovery, but recently he has been very good in the training process. We had to let him play.
At the same time, we gave Kabaev a rest, he played a lot of games in this part of the season.
Karavaev and Bilovar also played today. The latter was sick a lot, he also had a difficult recovery with the use of antibiotics. Last match we released him as a substitute, and today - from the first minute. But in the second half he came to me and said: "Vladimirovich, I can't take it anymore". We were ready for this, we made other substitutions according to the situation.
Benito played well today, showed his strong qualities. As for Samba's goal, it was our instruction, we agreed on it, we were working on it. The guys did well!
- Please, tell us about your team's plans for the off-season.
- We plan to meet on 23 June. But, firstly, we will give rest to the guys who will be involved in the Olympic team at the international tournament in France. Secondly, we have to take into account Euro-2024. We wish our national team success at this tournament. We will watch when it finishes its entry in Germany, and then we will understand how much rest should be given to our representatives in the national team. Finally, there is also the Olympics, and our players can be involved there too.
Yes, it is not easy. But, I repeat, on 23 June we have planned a training camp and medical examination for the players who will be available and ready for the training process at that time. Tentatively, on the 7th of July, we will go to Austria for the preparatory training camp, for which we have planned training process and control matches. I think, from there, after the end of the training camp, we will go to our first Champions League qualifying match.
Vitaliy Ponomariov, head coach of "Rukh":
- Of course, we are not satisfied with the result of the match, but probably we are not ready to play at the European Cup level yet. We need to come to it and be ready for this level.
I am grateful to the players of our team for a quality season. Many guys have just started to play at the UPL level, so I am grateful to them.
Yes, we can say that today Dynamo played to some extent with its reserve squad, but it also has good players, and we cannot say that they are much weaker. We just need to be ready for such matches. Today it was important not to lose, but you could see from our team's mistakes that the guys were worried. We need to go through a certain football path, to gain experience, so that there were no such mistakes.
After the break we wanted to add some spice, we did not play for a draw today, we wanted to score goals. And, of course, we wanted to get into the European Cup. It didn`t work out. But this is a sign that we need to work harder, to move forward. All the guys of our team have a perspective with the right approach to work. So I don`t see any tragedy. We had a pretty good, quality season.
Oleksandr POPOV from the Arena Lviv stadium
