The head coach of Zhytomyr’s Polesie Ruslan Rotan talked about what he thinks of his team’s opponent in the 2nd qualifying round of the Conference League — “Santa Coloma” from Andorra.
Ruslan Rotan“You are probably considering this team based on its name. No one knows the team ‘Santa Coloma’, but this is the champion of Andorra — although it’s Andorra, it’s still a champion (in reality, the Andorran championship for the 2024/25 season ended with ‘Santa Coloma’ in 3rd place; however, the club is the record holder for the most championship titles in Andorra with 13 — ed. note).
We must understand that if I’m not mistaken, 14 or 15 players from this team are footballers from Spanish academies — ‘Zaragoza’, ‘Real Sociedad’. These are very good academies.
In Europe, the playing discipline of all teams has reached a new level. Everyone strives to play disciplined and compact.
And ‘Santa Coloma’ is exactly such a team: they want to play with the ball, they are disciplined, and they are compact in defense. And in the matches against ‘Borac’ (4:1, 0:2, - ed. note), they showed this in the previous stage. Especially in the first game, where they missed 3–4 chances. It was really a good match from ‘Santa Coloma’. In the return leg, our opponent played more for the result. And until the red card for ‘Santa Coloma,’ they were playing evenly with ‘Borac’. And ‘Borac’, just so you know, made it to the 1/8 finals of the Conference League last season.
So we must respect every opponent. We should not look at the name — let it be ‘Santa Coloma’, let it be ‘Milan’. We must, of course, focus on ourselves, but every player and coach must respect every opponent,” said Rotan at the press conference before the first match with ‘Santa Coloma’, which will take place today in Presov, Slovakia.
