Ruslan Rotan: "We will do everything to get Ukraine to the European Championship"

26.09.2022 19:36

Photo of UAF press service

The head coach of the youth national team of Ukraine, Ruslan Rotan, shared his expectations for the return match of the Euro 2023 (U-21) playoff selection against Slovakia, which will take place on September 27 in the Polish city of Bielsko-Biala at the Municipal Stadium (beginning - at 18.30 Kyiv time). Considering the defeat in the away match (2:3), blue-yellow now only need a victory.

"These two days were devoted to the team recovering more, both physically and psychologically. They took this time to recover, so I think the guys are ready and understand what is needed tomorrow. I think that everything is in our hands and feet.

Regarding the personnel situation, as it happens after matches, there are some micro-damages. Vivcharenko will miss the match due to disqualification. This is our only loss.

Playing defense? Everyone understands that we made mistakes. But everyone always loses together, the main thing is to draw conclusions and move on. We have drawn conclusions, and I am sure that tomorrow we will not make such mistakes.

In terms of psychology, everything is apparently arranged in such a way that boys understand: unnecessary emotions and experiences should be discarded. There is a match to be won. Everyone understands this very well.

Players who have more confidence were selected as part of Slovakia in the first match. These are football players from the national team who have already played for the first team and demonstrated a rather good game. Strelets, Suslov — they showed us that these are performers who lead the entire team. Well, character should be singled out, it is their main weapon. This is a team that fights for the result until the end. We saw it in the last match, we will see it tomorrow. We need to be ready, first of all, for this character and for this game, when there are a lot of long passes.

I would say that psychologically we understand: we only need victory, we have to throw everything away. Due to our skill, structure... We all need to show character. This will probably be the most difficult game for us at this stage, so we have to understand that.

Stadium? To be honest, it was the first time we came to it, this was the first training session. Probably, we would have liked to practice even before that, but the situation is such that we did not have such an opportunity. It's okay, it's a good stadium, modern. We have every chance to show a good game and please, first of all, our soldiers and defenders, as well as the whole country. Lawn? I already said that Slovakia trapped us with the artificial pitch in Žilina. Therefore, we are back on the green lawn, and everything is in our feet.

We would like Ukrainians who live and are here because of the war to support us. We will be glad to see them and we will do everything to ensure that Ukraine gets to the European Championship," says Ruslana Rotanya. Community Sports.