On Tuesday, March 11, in the match of the 21st round of the Ukrainian championship, Kyiv “Dynamo” played a draw 2:2 against Luhansk “Zarya”. The match took place in Kyiv at the Valeriy Lobanovsky Dynamo Stadium. We present to you the post-match press conference of the head coach of the capital team Alexander Shovkovsky.
— Why did your team practically “sit” in a low block from the first minutes and allow “Zarya” to have such a tangible advantage?
— We did not agree to “sit” in a low block. We have a certain understanding of how we want and should act actively. Why it happened otherwise, I cannot comment on right now.
First of all, the guys need to sort out their attitude. The first two matches of 2025: there is a result, everything seems fine, but then the players began to approach the training process differently than before. You need to love football in yourself, not yourself in football. Every day, practically before each training session, I tell the guys: you will play as you train, and you will never rise to the level of your expectations but rather fall to the level of your readiness. This is exactly what is happening now. Unfortunately. We will definitely analyze the situation and draw certain conclusions.
As you’ve noticed, today we had to involve four players from our youth team for the match. It’s not easy to tackle the task without reinforcements.
— Tell us about the personnel situation in the team in more detail.
— Kabayev had certain problems, and hence today he was in the starting lineup. Pihalenok got injured. Luchkevich would not have played today anyway, but he also got injured. Voloshin and Ignatenko are also injured. So there are certain problems.
And, I repeat, there are specific problems with the mood. Here, one could also talk about my shortcomings, and perhaps there is some current within the team that also needs to be dealt with.
Post-match press conference of “Zarya” head coach Mladen Bartulovich.
Alexander POPOV from the Valeriy Lobanovsky Dynamo Stadium