Main coach of Donetsk Shakhtar Marino Pushich commented on his team’s loss to Dortmund Borussia (1:3) in yesterday’s match of the final, 8th round of the main stage of the Champions League.
Marino Pushich“I can express my thoughts about this game very briefly, the conclusion is this: we played quite well, especially in the second half, while the opponents scored. So that’s how the game went: we played, they scored.
In the first half, the game was even until the goal. We built our attacks reasonably well until the 16th minute, we didn’t have good decisions in the final phase of the attack, although we had a very big chance in the first half. But, as I said at the beginning, in this game there is a very thin line: either you outplay your opponent, or he outplays you on the counterattack. And they play very well on the counterattack; we knew this. Twice we executed situations quite well and carried out good attacks because we found good positions for it, and yet twice we lost the ball very easily and then received two counterattacks. In fact, that’s all that happened in the first half. But at the 44th minute, we conceded the second goal.
And it shouldn’t be like that, because it’s 0:2, it’s very hard to come back from such opponents because they are physically very strong, stronger than us. Although in the second half we continuously tried, made some changes, and, in my opinion, dominated—we completely controlled the ball, created danger, executed one or two set pieces, our goalkeeper dealt well, we scored a nice goal thanks to high pressing and, I believe, we had a very big chance to equalize after 1:2. In a situation where we dominated, playing very quality football, we didn’t score, unfortunately.
It’s still a game, 1:2, we tried, took much more risks, made certain adjustments. There was a moment where they outplayed us in the final phase of the attack and scored a very good goal—the score became 3:1 and the game ended, although we tried to score.
As I said at the beginning, I think we played, and they scored. That’s the summary of this game, which is disappointing for us. But I can’t blame my players in anything. Although we could have made better decisions in certain moments, they worked very hard, played the game according to our philosophy. We had many young players on the field, who found themselves in such a large stadium, under such great pressure, and had to play such a match, so this was a wonderful lesson for us. We earned seven points in this Champions League campaign. In my opinion, we could have gained more, I think we deserved more. But this is also a lesson for the future for us,” said Pushich.
