Vitaliy Odegov: "We called 16 performers in order for as many guys as possible to gain international experience"

25.04.2019 22:04

Photo by Pavlo Kubanov

Head coach of the Futsal Youth National Team Vitaliy Odegov spoke about the team's affairs ahead of the tournament in Italy.

In preparation for the matches final of Euro 2019 (U-19) our team on April 27-29 will take part in Torneo Delle Nazioni. During training and training collection of blue and yellow in Uzhgorod their mentor Vitaliy Odegov spoke with the press service of the Futsal Association of Ukraine.

— Within a few days, the youth team will hold its first international duel after participating in the the main round of Euro-2019 in Northern Macedonia. Tell us about priorities for the upcoming tournament.

- As part of Torneo Delle Nazioni, we will play with the national teams of Spain, Italy and Slovenia. The task is to see your level in the confrontation with the Spaniards. It is one of the strongest teams in European and world futsal at all levels. Let's try to get the most out of the matches, as well as understand what else we need to work on the eve of the final part of Euro-2019. I want the guys to feel confident in confronting strong opponents.

— This time, more players than usual are summoned to the national team. Tell us, what is the quantitative change?

- We called 16 performers in order for as many guys as possible to gain international experience. We had the opportunity to take so many players to Italy and decided to take advantage of it. During the three matches, the coaching staff will be able to allocate time on the field to each of them. This will benefit both the futsal players themselves and the team work.

— There are several debutants in the team. Can you tell us more about them?

- Yes, Andriy Britan and Maksym Sekhov became absolute newcomers of the youth national team. Andrew is a little younger. He proved himself quite well in the youth Extra-League, where he became a champion in the Academy of NFC "Hurricane". Maxim plays for InBev in the Zhytomyr championship and looks pretty good. Extraordinary evidence of this was his successful game in the All-Ukrainian AFLU final, where he and his team won gold medals. We don't stop and always try to look at new candidates who are doing their best at the club level.

— Yesterday, during the finals of the Ukrainian Championship among universities, Fyodor Hovakimyan was injured. Will he go to Italy with his team?

- Unfortunately, the injury will not allow Fedor to go to the tournament with the national team. Of course, we will miss him, because he is one of the key players of the team. We wish him recovery and look forward to the next meeting. Instead, Oleg Negela from Hurricane-2-KFV was called up to the national team.

— Do you still have plans for training sessions in the spring?

- At the end of May we plan to gather in Ukraine. We will hold a training camp and play sparring matches with our country's futsal teams. During this time, we will try to work on a number of technical and tactical tasks, so we chose this path.