On Sunday, August 31, in the match of the 4th round of the Ukrainian championship, Kyiv’s Dynamo defeated Zhytomyr’s Polesie with a score of 4:1. The match took place in Kyiv at the Dynamo stadium named after Valery Lobanovskyi. Here is the post-match press conference of the head coach of the visiting team, Ruslan Rotan.
Ruslan Rotan. Photo — Yu. Yuriev— During the match, it was noticeable that your team was less physically prepared than Dynamo. What do you think the reason for this is?
— I wouldn’t say that we were worse prepared. I believe the first 30 minutes of the match were completely under our control. And we should have scored a second goal. Then, our only mistake led to Dynamo’s goal. The penalty just left our team in shock. Psychologically, we looked disorganized, we dropped our heads. That’s the main negative. We needed character. The penalty completely broke the game. For us, that’s for sure.
— Why didn’t you resort to rotation, as Dynamo did?
— You see our roster. A young Korniychuk came on, who is taking his first steps at this level. Therefore, there are many problems. We field our strongest players. And we work from there. There is competition. Rotation would have been a better decision, but Dynamo has two equally strong squads, which, unfortunately, cannot be said about us.
— In your squad, there are 15 or 16 foreigners. Yet today we only saw two of them. Why?
— Very simple answer: there are training sessions and there is competition, which they lose in those training sessions.
Post-match press conference of Dynamo head coach Oleksandr Shovkovskyi.
Oleksandr POPOV from the Dynamo stadium named after Valery Lobanovskyi
