FC Dynamo Kyiv head coach Mircea Lucescu answered journalists’ questions after 0:1 defeat against FC Obolon Kyiv in the Ukrainian Cup round of 16:
- Why didn’t Vladyslav Vanat play?
- He’s injured.
- Considering that you substituted Brazhko, do you think the conceded goal is his fault?
- He did a really bad job, passed inaccurately, didn’t defend properly. That’s about players’ mentality. They knew it’s a cup tie, a special game. There’s no huge difference between big and small clubs here. You can win only if you have dedication, do the best you can and stay constantly focused. We let Obolon create chances and score. Only 20 minutes before the time we started playing the way we were supposed to. I could hardly recognize many of our players. That’s the problem.
This game wasn’t actually that hard. Recently we beat Obolon in the UPL, but today it was important to make our players be focused. Benito made a lot of mistakes, at least three. We didn’t expect that. I should have included 17-year-old forward Ponomarenko into the squad list and should have let youngsters – Malysh, Tsarenko – play.
I would also like to add that I don’t understand what referee was doing with those pauses every 2-3 minutes. He stopped the game 50-60 meters far from the penalty area for some reason. But anyway our defeat is my fault.
Still referee was supposed to help the teams boost their attacking efforts so that they could perform different combinations. He didn’t let us play football we wanted to. Our player could demonstrate their level.
