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Let’s not cling to the fact that Luis Castro was not on the coaches’ bridge in yesterday’s fight, it was he who prepared the team for the confrontation with Borussia Gladbach. This is understandable, and this was also confirmed by Darijo Srna in the pre-match flash interview.
I cooked, I cooked and I did not prepare … After 0: 6 in Kiev, Castro got a lot of nuts, first of all, by the choice of the starting lineup. When Taras Stepanenko, Junior Moraes, Viktor Kovalenko, Alan Patrick, Andriy Pyatov, Nikolay Matvienko, Serhiy Kryvtsov, in a word, the main players of Shakhtar, were already in the cage, the coach again bet on Cooper, Khocholava, Maikon, Trubin, Marcos Antonio. And I miscalculated. The trick that worked in Madrid in the game against Real Madrid failed a week later, when they miraculously managed to fight off the Inter offense. A week later, when the surprise effect of the unusual starting lineup was exhausted, and the reserves were tired of a high-level game, and there was a total failure. 0-6 at home: This has never happened with Shakhtar in their twenty-five year history playing on the international stage.
Kashtro had no choice but to admit failures and mistakes. After 0: 6 you will not complain about the refereeing, but after the success of this squad in the confrontation with “Inter” and “Real” the players cannot be blamed for incompetence. However, one argument remained: it is not our day, there will be another game against Borussia; we will see in the field what conclusions were drawn from the shameful defeat.
0: 4 … Luis Castro has lost another trump card. Having played in a 0-0 draw with Inter in the second round of the Champions League, Shakhtar was called a team that can react quickly and draw conclusions. After all, that result was in stark contrast to 0: 5, which took place two months earlier in the Europa League semi-finals of the same “Inter”. This time, the error was not corrected.
Worse still: the Shakhtar stepped on the same rake. Luis Castro made many changes to the starting line-up for the match in Germany compared to the Kiev match. Aside from Ismaily, who has been injured for a long time, and Tyson, who has recently been depressed more than playing soccer, the lineup was optimal. The tactics even changed: the 4-1-4-1, which took place in Kiev, became 4-3-3. Marlos fell lower, closer to defenders Stepanenko and Alan Patrick, thanks to whom Shakhtar tried to win the center of the field.
The “Borussia” played at home as they were: the same 4-2-3-1, the same high line of defense, the same density in the center and the pressure. The Germans eased the pressure only in the second half of the home game; they were eligible when the score was 3: 0. And here Shakhtar conceded just one goal in 45 minutes (in the previous three halves of the match, just nine). And the statistical panorama even improved slightly: we managed to overtake Borussia in ball possession, level up in the number of shots (14 against 13), overtake the opponent in the number of passes made, in the quality of the passes and compare key assist terms (nine versus nine). This is how Kashtru “triumphed” after the game, but didn’t you understand that “Borussia” in the second half did not deliberately step up? Rose’s team played pragmatically and rationally, leaving the naive opponent only the pleasure of statistical progress in one of the four halves of the showdown.
Kashtru must take responsibility that the team in both games against Borussia has run a shorter distance than the opponent. You can blame everything on the coronavirus, but it seems that there is more than one habit here: working at low speed at UPL. However, enough in the matches with Dnipro-1 and Mariupol is not enough in the Champions League. In the last three European Cup games, Shakhtar have hit five shots on goal, which is just one more than the number of goals conceded by the Pitmen in a Borussia half. The team has never shown such an imbalance in the Champions League.
In the last eight matches of the Champions League, only one win, the last three matches, no goals were scored. These are not the worst series in the history of Shakhtar’s performances at this tournament, but they are already the limit. In addition, Castro has no margin of error, because the last place in the group after four points in two starting rounds will raise the highest local success of the Castro coach to the accident rank.
Also, Dynamo at UPL doesn’t allow Shakhtar to look from behind.
