News from the camp of Ukraine's Euro 2024 group rival. Slovakia's head coach Francesco Calzona has reacted to the scandalous situation related to the recent statements made against him by the Slovak national team veteran, 33-year-old striker Robert Mack.
Recall that not so long ago, the forward publicly expressed his displeasure that having travelled from very far away Australia (Mac now plays for Sydney FC) for the Slovakian national team's March matches against Austria (0:2) and Norway (1:1), he received only 7 minutes of playing time in the first of these games and sat out the entire meeting with the Norwegians.
"If the coach didn't want to use me in those matches, he didn't need to call me up. And he just dragged me across the world. It not only made me very angry, but I felt a lot of regret for treating me like that. It was a stab in my back," Mack said, among other things.
Yesterday, Calzona held a press conference on the start of the Slovak national team's preparations for Euro 2024 and, among other things, had to answer a question about the situation with Mack, who was not included in the national team's extended bid for the European Championships.
"Mack made a mistake. If something doesn't work out in football, it should be discussed first of all with the coach. He should have called me instead of addressing his problems through the media.
I was available to him for the previous three months. He never called me once. All that happened in this situation was a message from Mac's agent that I received on Monday, already after our extended Euro 2024 bid had been announced. I don't like to communicate with agents, I like to communicate directly with players. That said, I have shown Mac my trust through the media.
As for the very essence of Mack's claims, a coach doesn't look at where a player is from, whether he plays near or far from Slovakia. If I were to make decisions based on who is from where, only players from Bratislava would be playing in the national team," Calzona said.