The head coach of the Lithuanian “Zalgiris” Vladimir Cheburin commented on his team’s victory over the Maltese “Hamrun Spartans” (2:0) in the first match of the 1st qualifying round of the Champions League. Let’s remind that the winner of this pair on aggregate will become an opponent of Kyiv’s “Dynamo” in the 2nd qualifying round of the Champions League.
Vladimir Cheburin“In the first half, it was a game on countering courses, but there were not many chances. After the break, sharp attacks appeared from both teams. And many set pieces. Thanks to one of them, we managed to score: we worked well on this “set piece”, it worked, I’m very happy about it.
After that, we had a certain advantage, holding the ball more in the opponent’s half, but the opponent didn’t just stay in defense, they also crossed the midfield,
trying to organize attacks.
The end of the match was ours. We scored the second goal and had other chances to change the score. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to score everything, but we had chances today.
Bravo to the players of “Zalgiris”. A lot of effort was spent today, a lot of energy. Maybe in the first half it didn’t look as beautiful as we planned, we didn’t manage everything. But in the second half, we slightly adjusted our plan, and we played much better. Yes, we had more chances, besides those in which we scored goals, but I’m not saying that the opponent didn’t have sharp moments. And the score is on the scoreboard.
As for the return match, I’ll say it again: these are championship teams. Moreover, we perfectly understand the natural conditions in Malta. So it won’t just be very difficult, but a very tough match. So we need to prepare. We have now experienced what our opponent is, felt their strong sides, weak spots. Now we know much more about each other. We will analyze and prepare for the next game.
Our scouting is also working well. We didn’t have much information about “Hamrun Spartans”, but we had some. We only made mistakes about two players in the starting lineup of our opponent for today’s match. This doesn’t mean that we are such visionaries: we just watched one of the matches of “Hamrun Spartans”, although they were very closed. And we made certain adjustments in our preparation.
We have the highest goals, and we don’t have any others. I already said, we need to be
champions, win the Cup, the Super Cup. This is always so and every year. I have been in
“Zalgiris” for the fifth year, and for the fifth year this goal doesn’t change. In European competitions, our goal now is also big — reaching the main stage of the Champions League. Maybe it all sounds funny, but without a dream, you won’t get there,” Cheburin said at a press conference after the match with “Hamrun Spartans”.
Text transcription — Dynamo.kiev.ua, when using the material hyperlink is mandatory!
