Dynamo assistant head coach Maciej Kędziorek spoke with the club’s press service sharing more details about joining the coaching staff of White-Blues and his work with the team during the training camp.
- This season you joined Dynamo as an analyst and set-piece specialist. Tell us a bit about how you were invited.
- First of all I’d like to say that I’m working very hard on learning the Ukrainian language. I hope that soon we’ll be able to communicate in Ukrainian. Secondly, yes, I came in as an assistant head coach and a set-piece specialist. Those were my main responsibilities. Since our coaching staff has now changed my duties have changed as well - they’ve expanded a bit.
- Before Dynamo you worked as both an assistant and a head coach exclusively in Poland. Dynamo is your first foreign club in your coaching career. Were you worried by the fact that Ukraine is at war and matches are often interrupted by air-raid alerts?
- Yes, I know very well what is happening in Ukraine. It would be foolish to say that I’m not afraid. In Poland I worked with many coaches and players who had experience in Ukraine, and I researched this topic quite deeply. Right now the most important thing is that I’m here to help the team regardless of what’s happening around us.
- These are your first training camps with Dynamo. You can see how passionate and active you are. Did you miss football during the break or are you always a perfectionist?
- Yes, these are my first camps with Dynamo and we’re here to work hard and prepare for the second part of the season. You’re right to notice that football is my passion and I hope it stays with me forever because it’s something special that drives me. And I want to help as much as I possibly can.
- In your opinion what should Dynamo’s coaching staff do to ensure progress and consistent high-quality performances?
- I really hope you’ll see the answer to that question on the pitch during our upcoming matches. I truly hope fans will be satisfied with our performances.
- What do your ideas and combinations look like? How much time does it take to work on them and how many repetitions are needed in training to make them work in matches?
- There’s no single answer to that because everything depends heavily on time. For example we had virtually no time during our recent Conference League and league matches as we spent most of it traveling by buses and trains. Many ideas actually came to me on the road. Usually, if we have a longer cycle, after a match we analyze mistakes, look at what could have been done better and then start preparing for the next opponent.
- Do you work on tactical aspects individually with players or as a team? If individually, could you share some details?
- Of course we discuss all these aspects with head coach Ihor Kostiuk first. After that I speak with players individually - I ask for their thoughts, explain head coach’s views and sometimes add my own remarks. We work on correcting mistakes but it’s also very important to develop and enhance players’ strengths.
