Dynamo head coach Ihor Kostiuk commented on his team’s performance in the Round 22 match against Karpaty (0:1) in an interview with the official broadcasters.
– We saw the replay of the moment when Matvii Ponomarenko scored but the referee disallowed the goal and explained his decision to the captains. How did he explain it to you?
– He didn’t explain anything to us. I believe it was a clear goal. The goalkeeper lost control of the ball, Ponomarenko reacted quicker, played it and scored a legitimate goal.
– Karpaty started the match very actively today. Before scoring they had other chances and imposed pressure in the penalty area. Was this intensity from the Lviv side a surprise for you and your team or did you expect a difficult game like in the first round?
– Of course, we emphasized that Faal plays well with his body and holds the ball effectively. We saw that their attacks at the beginning went through him and we didn’t deal with it well enough. Even though we highlighted this, perhaps I couldn’t get the message across to players to mark him more tightly. And we see that in the finishing zone we made the same mistake again as in the match against Obolon – we didn’t block the shot. We train this and talk about it but in the game we repeated the same mistake.
– Ponomarenko had many attempts on goal today but most of them were blocked. It seemed he was perhaps too eager to score. Not to say this caused his sending-off but in some moments he overdid it.
– Of course, a player shouldn’t act so emotionally in such situations. But on the other hand there were many moments when Babohlo held him and hit him from behind, and the referee didn’t react at all. Still Matvii shouldn’t behave like that.
– Many of your team’s chances came from crosses from flanks. Did you specifically focus on that?
– Yes, of course. You saw how well the opponent closed down the center and all our attempts through the middle ended in losing the ball. But when we attacked down the flanks, which we emphasized, we created danger. Yarmolenko could have scored with a header and after two low crosses in the first half we were just half a meter short of finishing them. Redushko also had a header. So yes, the focus was on the flanks, quick attacks and finishing zones. We also wanted to play off second balls.
– Yatsyk, Ogundana and Mykhavko were not in the squad today. When can we expect at least some of them to return?
– Taras will start training with the main group next week. Shola had health issues so he wasn’t in the squad today. Yatsyk picked up a muscle injury in yesterday’s pre-match training. He was planned to start because he trained well during this cycle. Unfortunately we had to field Shaparenko instead who had played 80 minutes for the national team three days earlier, and he lacked freshness and attacking aggression today.
