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After a wonderful trip to Greece, where Kolos turned out to be stronger and better than the local Aris, it is still too early for Ruslan Kostyshin’s pupils to rest on their laurels. To solve the problem of reaching the group stage of the Europa League, there will be two more qualifying rounds. And the closest rival of Kovalevka’s representative will be Croatian “Rijeka”.
We propose to understand in more detail what this club is to better understand the challenges Kolos will have to face.
Visiting card
The football club “Rijeka” was founded in July 1946 and was originally called “Kvarner”. The team received its current name in 1954, and shortly thereafter secured a ticket to the elite division of the Yugoslav Championship. There “Rijeka” spent most of the time until the collapse of this country, but did not achieve serious success.
Rijeka did much better with his participation in the National Cup. In 1978, the Whites won their first major trophy, winning the Yugoslav Cup. And already in the next season “Rijeka” managed to defend the title of Cup champion. White had the opportunity to win the third similar trophy in 1987, but lost to Hajduk on penalties.
After the collapse of Yugoslavia and the organization of the independent Croatian championship, Rijeka began to appear at the top much more frequently. In particular, to date, the “white” has 7 sets of “silver” and 3 “bronze” medals in the Croatian Championship. However, Rijeka claimed the main trophy in its history at the end of the 2016/17 season, when it sensationally beat Dynamo Zagreb by 2 points at the finish line and clinched the title of national champion, which remains the only one for whites. .
At the same time, Rijeka was able to continue successfully participating in the National Cup after the collapse of Yugoslavia. To date, white has six victories in the Croatian Cup, and this team is the current winner of the trophy, which he managed to defend, because he won it at the end of the 2018/19 season. It is noteworthy that in total, Rijeka reached the final of the Yugoslavia or Croatia Cup on 10 occasions, and won 8 trophies with only 2 losses, which speaks of how it is customary to characterize such teams, the cup character of the rival closest to Kolos in the Europa League.
Stadium
Unfortunately, by the will of all, “Kolos” again, as against “Aris”, will be forced to play the game away from home, and not in his beautiful new arena. Rijeka plays its home games at the Ruevica Stadium, whose official name coincides with the club’s name: the HNK Rijeka Stadium.
This arena was installed in the fall of 2014 and opened in the summer of 2015. The stadium is Rijeka’s temporary home until a new club stadium, Kantrida, is built.
Initially, Ruevica was designed for just over 6,000 spectators, but Rijeka owner Damir Miskovic invested in expanding the stadium’s capacity to 8,000 so that whites could host opponents in their arena in group rounds. the Europa League and Champions League.
It should be noted that the budget for the construction of “Ruevitsa” amounted to 24 million euros. The construction cost of the new “Country” was estimated two years ago at 40 million euros, however, this amount is likely to increase when it comes to the acceptance of the stadium in operation.
Coach
Since September 23, 2019, Rijeka has been led by the Slovenian Simon Rozhman. This 37-year-old specialist is little known outside of the Balkan region. As a footballer, Rožman played in his native Slovenia in the second-tier teams, in the midfielder position. He ended his playing career in 2009 when he was only 26 years old.
FC Rijeka. Simon Rozman
Rozhman began his work as a coach at Slovenian “Celje”, where he initially supervised the issue of recruiting young footballers for the club’s academy. In 2014, Simon was appointed Celje’s head coach, which immediately led the team to the record of winning the silver medal of the national championship, and also led the players to the final of the Slovenian Cup. After that, Rozhman accepted Domzale’s invitation, with which he nevertheless won the National Cup at the end of the 2016/17 season, but due to a failed start of the 2019/20 championship he was forced to resign, and soon received a Rijeka invitation. …
With “Rijeka” Rozman finished third in the last Croatian Championship, and also defended the title of owner of the country’s Cup. It is true that participation in the Europa League qualification with the whites will not be a historic event for the coach’s career, since he managed to make his debut at this stage of the European tournament with Celje in 2015, when he was just 32 years old.
Team leaders
Stars of the first magnitude, of course, are not in the “Rijeka” and cannot be due to objective reasons. However, the leader of this team last season was quite obvious: it is center forward Antonio Colak. He is 27 years old, was born in Germany and has dual citizenship (German-Croatian). Cholak began his football career in German clubs, but did not achieve great success, playing successfully mainly in reserve teams (in particular, the forward scored 30 goals in 59 games for the Nuremberg reserves). He moved to Rijeka last summer for 850 thousand euros from Hoffenheim, and easily became the team’s top scorer with 20 goals scored, as well as one of the best scorers in the Croatian championship (he shared this title with Tsaktash de Hajduk and Maric “Osijeka”). It is not surprising that a brilliant and effective match in Rijeka has led to the fact that the player’s value according to Transfermarkt has increased from 2 to 4 million euros during the year. However, this footballer will not play for the Whites against Kolos, as he was sold to Greek PAOK just a couple of days before the game, which represents a serious loss of personnel for the Croatian team.
FK Rieka
Against the background of Cholak’s absence, the 29-year-old central attacking midfielder Franko Andriyashevich is noteworthy. At one point, Rijeka sold him to Gent for 4.2 million euros, and last fall agreed with the Belgians on a two-year lease for the footballer. Last season Andriyashevich became the best assistant for his team in the Croatian Championship with 5 assists.
The 30-year-old right-back Ivan Tomechak stands out, because this player is known in Ukraine for his performances with Dnipro in the 2015/16 season. Then, after the problems that started with Dnipro, the Croatian left for Saudi Arabia, and before moving to Rijeka in February last year, he played a bit in Belgium for Mechelen and Club Brugge.
But Rijeka may have problems with the goalkeeper’s position. At the beginning of September, the ‘whites’ sold Verona to the 20-year-old talent Ivor Pandur, for whom they earned just under one million euros, and therefore now the experienced and not always stable Andrei Prskalo, 33, and Ivan Nevistic, 22, are fighting for the job. , which also has far from the best stats.
Playing style
Rijeka under Rozhman is a highly variable team in terms of choosing tactical schemes for the game. Most of the time, the mentor prefers to play with two forwards, although he often got on well with the lone Colak up front with Andriyashevich playing underneath him. In relation to the rather unexpected sale of the key forward, it is very difficult to predict how White will play against Kolos. It can be 5-3-2, 4-2-3-1, 3-5-2, and even (which is highly unlikely, however, only 5 games last season) 4-4-2.
“Rijeka” knows how to put a lot of pressure, especially she loves to do it in fights against opponents whom she considers less strong than her. With the favorites, White usually closes, so there is no doubt that this team exerts serious pressure. So, again, the big question is how the Croats will react to Kolos, and whether they will play cautiously against the Ukrainian guests, or will they try to “throw hats” from the opening minutes.
In general, Kolos’ closest rival is a very strong team from a physical point of view. Rijeka footballers feel very good in individual matches, winning on average more than half of them (50.2%). Kolos’ stats on this component are slightly less convincing: 48% won.
Yes, and in attack “Rijeka” shows itself better. With an average of 1.73xG expected goals, White has 1.62 goals scored. Rijeka concedes an average of 1.18 goals per match. “Kolos” is once again far from being the favorites in these comparisons: 1.28 goals scored at 1.31xG and 1.78 goals conceded on average per game.
On the other hand, Kolos will surely have a chance to take advantage of Rijeka’s weaknesses. This team prefers to play with the ball more than the Kovalevites (52% possession versus 44% in Kolos), but they do not have outstanding passing accuracy (only 82.2%), and they often lose (108 on average per game). .. If Kolos players manage to play as fluently and pragmatically as possible, and also not waste their chances, then Rijeka may be forced to make mistakes often enough and use them to their advantage.
Rijeka – Kolos. Prediction and announcement for the Europa League qualifying match
Previous matches
Considering the fact that Kolos is a debutant in the European cups, previously Rijeka did not have the opportunity to meet with the Kovalevites, however, they did meet our envoy during the independence of Ukraine and Croatia. In the 2009/10 season, on the 3rd qualifying round for the Europa League, the Whites landed on Metalist, and were defeated in both games, 2: 1 (in Rijeka) and 2: 0 (in Kharkiv). It is noteworthy that the victory of the Kharkiv team on the road in the 85th minute was brought about by an accurate blow from Vladimir Lysenko, who now plays for Kolos. Obviously, no one in Ukraine will care if the 32-year-old striker triumphs this time as the scorer of his team’s winning goal in the clash with Rijeka, who will continue Kolos’s campaign in this Europa League.
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