Ruslan Rotan: "The tournament will show how we prepared the Olympic team"

Ruslan Rotan, head coach of the Ukrainian Olympic team, spoke about the team's preparations for the Olympic Games.

Ruslan Rotan (photo: gettyimages.com)

"I believe that all the players are ready, but there is one thing that is a bit complicated - we only got Sych two days ago and Batagov yesterday. Roughly speaking, we have 3 days to assess their emotional state and make a decision.

Friendly matches? We always strive to win, but there are a lot of nuances that the coaching staff should pay attention to - first of all, this is essentially the second training camp for this team. And this chemistry is exactly what is developed at such training camps. As a coach, I felt that there would be problems with not letting the players go. Therefore, let's just say we did it proactively.

Just at this training camp, we added two players under the quota who were not with us at that training camp. So this is also an adaptation process, and it is also necessary. That's why we played these two matches. We tried to prepare the team as best we could. The tournament will show how we did it," Rotan said.

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