Ukrainian coach Yuriy Benyo shared his impressions of the match of the 3rd round of the 2024/25 Nations League Ukraine - Georgia (1:0).
"The main thing is that there is a result. This is the most important thing, given the state of the national team. Somewhere, perhaps, the game would have been a draw - the Georgians had chances, and not bad ones. Luck smiled on us. But the guys deserved it with their dedication and fight.
Both teams were hampered by the pitch, because the quality of the pitch was not good, it is obvious. Players suffered more on this field.
But the Ukraine national team really, especially in the first half, in the beginning of the game compared to the previous two games was quite different. They played more active high, and pressed, and had a pretty good reaction to the loss of the ball in the other team's half of the field. They went straight into the tackling, which led to a goal-scoring moment, when Mudryk scored a goal. This pleases the national team.
Further somewhere we played more on the result, because 1:0 psychologically, you don`t want - you don`t want, it put pressure, because we were afraid to lose this victory. So well done.
From the first minutes it was obvious that we tried to cover the opponent, not to let them start attacks, to force them to play long passes, which we just won. Yes, it was hard to build some combinations, constructive on this field. But the changes in the game were visible and obvious: we played more aggressively, we won many one-on-one battles, ball pickups - and this is just the mood for the match, adrenaline. It's a split second - who will be on the rebound. Plus, we built the right organization to pick up the ball. We built the right press to force the opponent to give an uncontrolled long pass," Benyo said.