FC Dynamo Kyiv head coach Mircea Lucescu answered journalists’ questions the day before the Europa Conference League 3rd qualifying round first leg against Aris Thessaloniki FC.
- I’m quite familiar with Greek football. I visited your country both as a player and as a coach. The atmosphere will be incredible tomorrow. Fans will be cheering for their team passionately as they always do, but it’s all going to be settled on the field anyway.
Aris have really good team of experienced players whose average age is 28-29 years. Meanwhile we lost foreign players due to war, so we mostly count on our Academy trainees. In terms of the quantity of club trainees, we’re among leading clubs of Europe. It’s good, but on the other hand our players lack experience on such level.
- You weren’t satisfied with your goalkeeper and defenders in two previous games. What do you expect tomorrow?
- I just want them to avoid mistakes (smiling). But this is a totally different competition. For instance, our defense did a good job against Al Hilal and we won 1:0. I think 0:0 will be a good result for us tomorrow.
- Your son Razvan used to work in Greece. Did you discuss any related issues with him?
- There’s no need for that. I’m experienced enough not to ask his anything of a kind. We’re both professional coaches and what we see ourselves is enough.
- Which team aims to qualify for the next stage more? We all know Dynamo are experienced euro cups side with lots of achievements…
- This is not the team that was before. We play football in times of war which is totally different. It took us 13 hours to get to Chernivtsi, then 4 – to get to Suceava, then 2,5 more to reach Thessaloniki. How do you think players are feeling after such trip?
The same was happening last season. Now we’ve decided to play euro cups games in Bucharest as it’s easier to reach there. As for domestic league, we’ll be playing home matches in Odesa.
So there’s no way one can compare previous years to what we have now. But I still hope we’ll be able to deliver a battle and demonstrate decent football tomorrow.
- Do you agree that Aris will be playing more loosely tomorrow?
- Aris will be playing at the home ground, they will be confident. We must aim to win anyway. That’s totally normal for our team as Dynamo are a brand, so we must fight for best possible outcome in every game. We realize we’ll be defending most of the time, so we must use the chances we get as effectively as possible.
