Mykola Kostenko, coach of the Ukrainian beach soccer team: "Currently we train four times a week"

16.05.2022 17:05

Mykola Kostenko, the head coach of the Ukrainian beach soccer team, commented on the process of preparing the blue and yellows for the current season. 

At the beginning of May, the Ukrainian beach soccer team started training at the Sunrise arena in Kyiv in the Hydropark in preparation for the 2022/2023 season. In these difficult times, the coach of the national team Mykola Kostenko managed to gather a significant part of the players of our national team and encourage them to train. With those who for various reasons can not take part in classes, our coach keeps in touch by phone. 

In an interview with the official website of the UAF, Mykola Kostenko spoke about the intricacies of training the team during the war: We appealed to both the players and the presidents of the clubs and invited everyone to gather at the Hydropark.

The basis was the players of "Alternative", which was joined by players of the national team of Ukraine, who were in Kiev. These are Dmytro Voitenko, Maksym Voitok, Yaroslav Zavorotny, Oleksandr Korniychuk, Ivan Hlutsky, Ihor Levchenko, Oleh Sirenko, Denys Sobotyuk, Andriy Nerush, Oleh Shytnik and Andriy Borsuk. At the same time, Ihor Borsuk, Oleh Zborovsky, Yuriy Shcherytsia, and Dmytro Medvid were absent for various good reasons. 

We train four times a week and last weekend we even organized a small tournament. In the first match, the national team of Ukraine played with "Alternative" and won with a score of 9: 5. In the second we met with the team of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and also won. I will note that the fight in these fights was uncompromising.

The main task at this stage, I consider psychological relief and maintenance of form. Since no one is training except for "Alternative" and a few other teams, it is very good that the guys are able to keep fit. The training went according to plan, we had microcycles with a moderate load and two-way games. That is, 50% of the lessons were warm-ups and specific exercises, and another 50% were games. In fact, the confrontations in these two sides were quite serious, because they played, so to speak, "with punishment", which immediately increased the desire of the players. "

It will be recalled that in the near future the national team of Ukraine will play in Kyiv at the tournament in memory of Yevhen Ryabchuk. Then our team will prepare for the qualifying round of the Euroleague-2022, which will take place from June 30 to July 3 in Nazare, Portugal. If successful, the wards of Mykola Kostenko will reach the Euroleague Super Final, which will take place in Italy (September 6-9). The qualification for the Super Final is also a preliminary qualifying round for the 2023 European Games to be held in Krakow.

Also in the summer, the national team of Ukraine will be selected for the 2023 World Beach Games under the auspices of the International Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC), which will be held in Catania, Italy.