Dynamo Kyiv captain Vitaliy Buyalskyi shared his thoughts after the team’s 0:1 defeat to LNZ in Round 12 of the Ukrainian Premier League.
– Today’s result is a tough one for Dynamo – the second loss of the season. How would you comment on the match?
– It’s hard to comment when your team loses. Probably we didn’t fully recover – we only had one proper training session yesterday. So I think, to some extent, today’s result was fair.
– What do you think was Dynamo’s main issue in positional attacks today? You couldn’t really create chances.
– That’s because LNZ had been preparing for our game for quite a while. I’m sure they analyzed each of our players and defended very well. You could see that we struggled to create chances and score a goal. If we don’t score, it’s hard to win.
– Can we say that Dynamo lost concentration at the end of the first half and conceded an avoidable goal?
– I wouldn’t say we lost concentration. When you play against teams like LNZ, that defend well, you have to take risks and come up with something unexpected to score. We tried to go through the middle – it didn’t work out. We didn’t manage to commit a tactical foul in time – and they scored.
It’s normal that a team defending deep will try to counterattack. That’s football – they win the ball and their two forwards are fresh and ready to sprint. They got the pass immediately and broke away.
– How would you comment on the episode with the unawarded penalty?
– I didn’t see it. I was the one taking the cross so I don’t know. But honestly I’m not even surprised anymore when penalties aren’t given.
– Did you talk to Yarmolenko? What happened to him?
– His calf muscle started to hurt.
– In the previous round Dynamo’s 42-match unbeaten streak ended. Now that it’s over, do you feel any pressure has been lifted?
– There wasn’t really any pressure about the streak. We were just playing well defensively, creating chances and scoring goals. Now, with so much traveling and no consistent training cycle, maybe we’re lacking freshness or energy – it’s hard to say what exactly. When you’re winning everything seems fine. But when you lose you start looking everywhere for what went wrong.
– Right now the league table doesn’t look very favorable for Dynamo. Do you pay attention to the standings yet or is it still too early?
– I don’t look at the table at all. It’s only the first half of the season. Believe me, after the winter break everything can turn upside down – you’ve seen that happen many times before.
– Do the fuller stands under the new attendance quota give the team extra motivation?
– It’s great that the fans are coming. We really enjoy playing with supporters in the stands, feeling their backing. When we played in Turkey in the Conference League the stadium there was completely full – that atmosphere gives you energy.
– There’s an international break next week. How will the club prepare for the next matches? Will there be a friendly game?
– We’ll have a few days off and then the coaching staff will plan the training schedule and probably arrange a friendly match as well.
– The match against Zrinjski ended in a confident win with six goals scored. Can you tell us more about that game?
– As you saw in the opening minutes Zrinjski created a few chances that could have led to us conceding. Thank God they didn’t score. We took our chance and that immediately gave the team confidence and freedom. It’s the same in the Ukrainian league – when we score first opponents often get discouraged; but if we fail to score we start to get nervous like today at the end of the first half. We wanted to create a chance and score but it didn’t work out.
– Dynamo had a tough run of games recently – Samsunspor, Kryvbas, two matches against Shakhtar, Zrinjski and now LNZ. It seemed the team ran out of emotional energy for this match.
– As I said, when the team wins, everything seems fine – everyone’s happy, everything’s great. But when the team loses, everyone starts looking for the problem – players, coaches, journalists. So it’s hard for me to say what exactly the main issue is right now.
