On Thursday, November 6, in the 3rd round match of the main stage of the Conference League, Kiev’s «Dynamo» defeated the Bosnian «Zrinjski» with a score of 6:0. The match was nominally a home one for the Ukrainian team, but due to the war, it was held in Lublin. Your attention is drawn to the post-match press conference of «Zrinjski» head coach Igor Štimac.
Igor Štimac— First of all, I want to congratulate Kiev’s «Dynamo» on a deserved victory. As for the match itself, I think we played well in the first half. The start of the match was good on our part; we created good positional moments, should have opened the score, didn’t give the opponent too much space, and didn’t allow them to take shots at our goal.
But then we reacted poorly to the first corner at our goal and conceded a goal. And the second goal in the second half came just at the moment when we wanted to make substitutions and reorganize after seeing where we needed to close the zones through which the opponent was creating danger for our goal. However, we conceded the second goal even before making substitutions. And after that, we just fell apart as a team. Hence, all the subsequent goals, each looked unimaginable for a team that had been playing very well in defense this season and conceded few goals.
And that’s completely unacceptable. We conceded several goals from near-post corners despite knowing that this is a strength of Kiev’s «Dynamo.» Nevertheless, we failed to respond properly. We conceded another goal after a free kick when we were unprepared for a quick play. It’s impossible to hope for something good in a match against such a great team as Kiev’s «Dynamo» if you make so many similar mistakes.
But I must take responsibility for this. Apparently, I miscalculated. I put many young players on the field because we have a killer playing rhythm, and because on Sunday we have a very tough match in the championship. We want to stand strong on all fronts, so we must make decisions about roster rotation.
The result is crushing, unpleasant, but we must be strong and immediately raise our heads and leave behind the sadness that is consuming us now. Because, I repeat, we have a very important championship match in just a few days.
— You yourself said that in three days you have an important match in the championship. How to psychologically recover the players after such a blow?
— Well, this is my job, I must do everything possible to restore the players' strength, to return their confidence in themselves and the team, and it is important to do this already for the next match, so we have only a couple of days for all this work.
As for the Conference League, there is neither time nor sense to regret what happened today and feel sorry for ourselves: we need to leave this match behind and strive to earn points in home matches in the tournament.
Alexander POPOV
