On Wednesday, April 2, in the 1/4 final match of the Ukrainian Cup, Kyiv’s “Dynamo” defeated Lviv’s “Rukh” with a score of 1:0 and advanced to the semifinals of the tournament. The match took place in Lviv at the “Arena Lviv” stadium. We present to you the post-match press conference of the head coach of the capital team, Oleksandr Shovkovskyi.
Oleksandr Shovkovskyi. Photo — Yu. Yuriev— I congratulate the fans of “Dynamo” on the victory and reaching the semifinals. Today we gave the opportunity to play to those players who have received less playing time. We deliberately took this step since we have 26 players in the squad, involving young guys from “Dynamo U-19”, and we are preparing with everyone for the matches. Among others, we also gave the chance to Morgun, who played his first official match for the first team of “Dynamo” today: I congratulate him on his debut and good game.
As for the analysis of this match, I would say that we could have avoided a nervous ending: we should have made the score more comfortable both in the first half and the second, and calmly finish this game. I always tell my players: a defensive mistake when we concede a goal is equivalent to that when we miss a 100% chance in attack and do not score. One-on-one! There we concede — here we do not score. It’s the same mistake. We will work on this. But it’s good that we played “to zero” today. Let’s move on.
— Who would you like to see as Dynamo’s opponent in the semifinals of the Ukrainian Cup?
— I see no point in this question. At all. Whoever I see in the semifinals, I need to go out and play the semifinal.
— How do you assess this short period in Lviv during which you played two consecutive matches with “Rukh”?
— For us, every match is the most important. And now the upcoming match against “Left Bank” in the next round of the Ukrainian Championship has become such for us. And we will prepare for it with maximum responsibility. Of course, it’s nice to achieve two away victories, but that’s already history, which cannot be changed. We need to face not our past, but our future.
— Did “Rukh” surprise you in any way?
— Every team develops its own gameplay schemes, moments, tactics, interactions, depending on the players they have at their disposal. But analyzing the actions of our opponent, we saw that “Rukh” played in the same style since the very beginning of the second part of the season. And in a period of three days, it is almost impossible to change anything. Therefore, we expected exactly such a game from the opponent.
Expect the post-match press conference of the head coach of “Rukh”, Vitalii Ponomaryov, in the coming minutes...
Oleksandr POPOV from Lviv
