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Head coach ““Luis Castro spoke of the defeat in the Champions League match against Borussia (0: 6).
– It seemed that the upcoming break for the Shakhtar training grounds is very useful: take a breath, forget about this defeat and return some experienced players to base. How do you think that?
– It hurts me because this defeat happened very unexpectedly. Basically this is the same line-up, the same team that played against Real Madrid and proved to be great both in attack and defense. This is practically the same line-up that we play with Inter, there we show ourselves very worthy in defense. When something like this happens today, it leaves a dirty and terrible stain on our team. As I just said, the first and second balls made us give up completely, because nobody expected this to happen. Now you are talking about a pause. Yes, a pause, but let’s not forget that we have 17 players in the national teams: Ukraine, Georgia, Israel, the Brazilian Olympic team. And before this break there will be a difficult game against the Dynamo. Then there will be no pause as we would like. But soccer taught me one thing: if negative things happen so suddenly, good things can happen just as quickly. We will go back to the level we played at. Yes, today the team is disappointed with that result, but in any case, we have to look ahead, fix something and improve.
– It is generally accepted that the European Cups show the real level of the teams. Shakhtar pleasantly surprised us with a win over Real Madrid, but today they surprised us unpleasantly. Where is the actual level of Shakhtar?
– Unfortunately, this is happening, and not just with our team. We can look at Liverpool, who lost and conceded 7 goals, Barcelona in the quarterfinals – 8, Bayern Hoffenheim – 4 goals, PSG lost 6 points at the start of the season … In general, there is a lot of instability during the pandemic. We went from season to season in three days, there was absolutely no time to rest and recuperate. Everything is very unstable and strange at the moment, and the teams show it too. We are very surprised today. It is clear that we play against a good team, against Borussia. But in the game we show today, 6 goals conceded is a fully deserved result. It was with such a voluminous score that today we were defeated. Very bad day for us. When this happens, many times you start to change the line-up, put one or another player, change something in your team, but in this case we continue with 90% of the same players that we play with Real Madrid and Inter. What happened surprised us a lot. But anyone has the right to be wrong, and today we made it. We hope to improve and not play like this again.
– Maybe the game with Dynamo was more important for Shakhtar and you had it in your head? Do you agree or refute this? How can the team prepare for the Dynamo after such a defeat?
– In those moments, we must understand that life goes on. Something went wrong for everyone, everyone went through difficult situations, including you. Life doesn’t end there: not for the teams, not for me, not for Shakhtar, not for you. Everything always advances. It is very important to react as quickly as possible and move towards our goal. Now it would be easy to sit down after the win and talk about how good everything is. But the hardest part is reacting after stumbling and moving on. We have this opportunity. Our team will and will do it in the next game. Unfortunately, this is not the first nor the last time this has happened, there will always be bad times. Life is made up of black and white stripes. Now everything can be corrected with daily work: mental, physical, tactical and technical. We are the same team that was in the semi-finals of the Europa League this year. We are the same team that finished the last championship with a 23-point advantage from second place. We are the same team that played against Real Madrid and Inter. Today is such a day, but everyone stumbles. Okay, it will be important to improve, solve everything and move on.
