The head coach of «Epicenter» from Kamianets-Podilskyi, Serhiy Nahornyak, commented on his team’s victory over Lviv «Karpaty» (3:1) in yesterday’s match of the 9th round of the Ukrainian championship.
«Today we completely closed the space for the opponent. Karpaty have qualified players who make very good use of this space, but we didn’t let them do it. We also made some changes in the lineup. I think all of this together gave a positive result.
We understand that as debutants, we were at the bottom of the standings. Half of the team had never played in the UPL before. It’s their first season — it was a bit difficult. Karpaty have opportunities, with qualified foreigners coming to them. It’s not for nothing that they play spectacular matches against „Shakhtar“ and „Dynamo“. I think the fans really like it. Today it turned out that we won, and I believe it was deserved.
What prevented us from scoring points in previous matches? In every game we had individual mistakes, anxiety. In terms of play, we lost to no one in this championship. Not even to Dynamo when we lost 1:4. There were individual mistakes. There was a thriller with „Kryvbas“ (4:5). Honestly — in some matches, the referees didn’t play in our favor. It’s important for any team.
There we didn’t hold on, there we conceded at the end of the match, there they didn’t give a clear penalty. Such a combination of reasons. I always told the guys, in terms of play, we didn’t lose to any team. We had a debut with Shakhtar, and then the Donetsk team was after „Beşiktaş“. You remember what they did to them. Everybody said it was the best Shakhtar in history. Now they look different. However, we caught them then and didn’t endure. No big deal, we are moving forward, not paying attention to the table. I try to protect the guys. We work from match to match,» said Nahornyak.