Dynamo Kyiv U19 forward Matvii Ponomarenko shared his thoughts on the Matchday 13 fixture of the National League U19 in which Dynamo earned a 1:0 away victory over Kolos Kovalivka:
– It was a very tough game because the weather conditions were difficult - fog and rain. But I think today was a great performance from us. We defeated Kolos - a team we hadn’t been able to beat for two seasons in a row. So today we had a lot of motivation to finally win. A united team stepped onto the pitch and we achieved a positive result.
– Is the victory over Kolos special for you?
– Every victory is special. But if you think about it, we were on the bus talking about this match, and even a week before the game we said it would be a matter of principle that it was time to finally beat them and we needed to give everything to win.
– You scored the winning goal. Can you recall how that moment unfolded?
– We intercepted the ball in midfield. I was running back from an offside position and Redushko saw that almost no one was near me so he played the ball into space. I chased it - there was one defender in front of me and I had to dribble past him and shoot. That’s exactly what happened - I beat the defender and knew I needed to shoot under the goalkeeper’s supporting leg so I struck into the bottom-left corner. Everything worked out perfectly.
– You’ve increased your record tally of goals in the National League U19. Do you think about this record?
– Honestly I try not to think about it and just go into every match with the desire to score goals. No matter what team I’m in, I have one goal - to go out there, score and help the team. I try not to think about the record because during a match it doesn’t help you. You step onto the pitch motivated and you know what you need to do.
– Today Dynamo created many chances but scored only once. What was missing to score more against Kolos?
– I don’t know, maybe a bit of bad luck - we hit the post and the crossbar. There were moments where we could have scored. Maybe it was due to the pitch because there was a lot of rubber crumb on it while we are used to training on natural grass.
We could have scored more but it happened that we scored one - and that’s fine. It doesn’t matter how many goals we scored, the main thing is that we got three points.
– In a few days Dynamo will play Hibernian in the UEFA Youth League. What are your expectations?
– We understand it will be a tough game because in the Youth League there are no easy matches. The coaching staff already told us that straight after the Kolos match we must switch our focus to the next game because it will be difficult. Hibernian is a good team and it will not be easy. We need to start preparing for the match from today.
