Dynamo Kyiv midfielder Vladyslav Kabaiev shared his thoughts after the Ukrainian Premier League away match against Shakhtar Donetsk which ended in a 1:3 defeat for the “White-Blues.”
– We started the game very poorly – unfortunately that’s becoming a bit of a bad trend for us. We concede early and then have to put in twice as much effort to recover. Or sometimes we concede at the end of matches. We talked about this in the dressing room – Andriy Yarmolenko said that concentration at the beginning and end of the game, especially against Shakhtar, is crucial. Unfortunately we lost that focus today.
I think that early goal had a big impact on the match. Once again we only started to play at a different tempo after conceding the second goal – and that’s not normal. But I don’t want to add too much negativity. It’s painful to lose, especially to Shakhtar, but we’re not hanging our heads or giving up. It happens – this is football. There are still many matches ahead in the league so nothing disastrous has happened. Of course the defeat hurts and tonight will probably be a sleepless one but what can you do?
– As always in matches against Shakhtar emotions were running high. How much did that affect the game for both sides?
– Of course you can’t play this opponent without emotion. Everyone understands that this is the Ukrainian “Clasico.” Many fans always come to these matches – both in Kyiv and in Lviv. We all used to watch Dynamo against Shakhtar as kids, dreaming of taking part in such a battle one day. Today I caught myself thinking about that – now I’m actually part of this rivalry. Maybe if there were no war even more fans would have come and the atmosphere would have been even more intense. We spent a lot of emotional energy and now we need time to recover. Right now there’s more frustration than positive emotion.
– Next week Dynamo play Zrinjski in the Conference League followed by another tough schedule. No time to dwell on this defeat, right?
– Exactly. It’s frustrating that we put in so much effort to become champions and then sometimes, in European competitions, we fail to perform – to put it mildly. So now we want to prove something – not so much to the fans but to ourselves – to show through our play that it’s time to switch on and get results. No one is giving up. We’ve got the Conference League ahead and a tough league match against LNZ who are in good shape right now. The goals for Dynamo are always the highest possible and we’ll give everything we have to win the title again this season.
– In your opinion is it easier to win the title for the first time or to defend it?
– We all want to prove – to ourselves and to fans – that last season’s title wasn’t a coincidence, that it was deserved. I think every player would say the same. But yes, every opponent plays their best football against Dynamo and Shakhtar – that’s normal. When I played for other clubs I also came out against Dynamo with huge motivation – you don’t even need extra words from the coach or fans, you feel it inside. Yes, it’s difficult but, if you play for Dynamo, if you wear this crest on your chest, you must be ready and brave enough to defend the title and fight to win it again.
