Mircea Lucescu: That’s a really hard-fought win

18-04-15 22:30:22

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Press conference by Shakhtar head coach after the game against Zorya.

- A difficult game. Incidentally, I expected that it wouldn’t be easy. We played against a very good team. Its growth in the Ukrainian championship is visible. Owing to the results Zorya have recently achieved, I can feel that they have the enthusiasm which affects the games. The team look quite aggressive, with great volume and organization of the game. Therefore, it was difficult to score until they grew weary a bit. Today we have created a great many chances, other than those we converted. I think it’s a well-deserved victory. Although it’s a hard-fought win, and we secured it only at the end of the match.

- It seemed that in the first half Shakhtar played through aerial passes, with nothing like that after the break. Was it your instruction?
- That’s exactly what we’d agreed upon. We shouldn’t have played aerially against such team as Zorya - with their central defenders taken into consideration. Against the team defended with a large number of players involved. We had to play low balls, using quick passes to rip open their defence. We created a few chances but, unfortunately, let the opponents off. There were one-on-one situations ... But let's not forget that we’ve scored following some crosses delivered into the box just when we expanded the opponents’ defence. This applies to both the first and second goals. But it happened after changing our attacking direction, rather than just after flank deliveries. Besides all that, there were too many long passes from Bernard, unfortunately he produced too many of them. He has not yet adapted to our type of game. On the plus side, Darijo did just the right thing on the opposite flank: he produced those passes when the situation demanded it.

- Do you agree that you secured the win in the last second of the first half?
- You could say that. Although with the chances we have created, we must have scored. Besides the four goals that we netted, we also created some 6 or 7 scoring chances.

FC Shakhtar