Igor Linnik: "It is already evident that Dynamo players trust the head coach"

Famous journalist Ihor Linnik spoke about Dynamo's draw (1:1) in the return match of the Champions League play-off round with Salzburg.

"Kyiv Dynamo, having shown a very good and incredibly fast game, still could not beat Salzburg, which on the sum of two matches showed itself to be a club more prepared for the challenges of the Champions League.

In my opinion, the reason is not only that Salzburg is staffed with talents from different continents and countries, while Dynamo is currently based only on Ukrainian players. The key to the Austrian club's success is rather in the fact that its training process, no matter how strange it may sound for Kyiv, has more stable roots.

"Salzburg" has long ago mastered the most modern principles of training, which, coupled with active selection allows him to almost painlessly from season to season to reproduce class teams. Under this model, new talents, passing through all stages of natural athletic selection, replace those who left for transfer promotion. Having once started its soccer conveyor belt, Salzburg keeps it in proper condition.

"Dynamo lose such continuity from time to time... to try to recreate it again. Oleksandr Shovkovskiy makes another such attempt and succeeded in his endeavor, bringing Kyiv to the start of European Cup qualification in such a state of readiness, which is unrecognizable for them.

The current generation of Dynamo players has never been in such a great playing form, for them it is just a novelty. I think that each of them has rediscovered modern soccer for themselves during these weeks. And as a team, they are all just getting to know their increased capabilities.

This, by the way, has already happened - for example, with the generation of Shovkovskiy, who, along with Shevchenko, Rebrov and others, once had a chance to get into Lobanovsky's hands and also really rediscover the great soccer....

As Lobanovsky then, so today Shovkovksy surely has to overcome, change stereotypes formed in the heads of young players in the previous years of their work. Among other things, we have to convince them that only when they reach a new level of readiness they as a team will be able to claim much higher heights in soccer.

And the players trust the head coach. It is already evident - by the desire, pressure and dedication with which the renewed Dynamo spent the Champions League qualification. It's a pity that the Kyiv team failed to give the maximum, to get everything at once in exchange for a more complicated and intensive training process. But now the main thing is to maintain and consolidate the taken direction, not to stop, not to be disappointed, not to doubt in it!

Perhaps, today this task is among the top-priority ones for Shovkovs'kyi. And already in the context of its consequences - setting quite specific goals for the season-2024/2025. There is the Europa League - an excellent testing ground for further testing of his new capabilities in the international arena. And there is the UPL, where with such quality of soccer who can challenge Dynamo?

Thus, in fact, in the hands - heads and feet - of Dynamo players themselves their future, their dream, their Champions League. Success from the process of continuous improvement simply has nowhere to go," Linnyk wrote on Facebook.