We bring to your attention the opinions of the chief coaches for both the teams, following the friendly match between Azerbaijan – Ukraine teams under the age of 21 at “Dalga Arena” today:
Ruslan Rotan (Chief Coach of the national team of Ukraine U-21): “The last time I was in Baku was in 2015. Frankly speaking, your city has changed a lot and I was amazed in a good sense. Thanks you for specially inviting us for a friendly game.
The match did not go as we expected. As it was a friendly match, we tried to check our newly invited football players. This wish of ours was partly fulfilled. We got two red cards and stayed in minority. I was very pleased with the perseverance of our players. The Azerbaijan national team played more disciplined, flexible and compact. And this Milan Obradovich’s work. Because we did not observe it in our previous matches".
Milan Obradovic (Chief Coach of the national team of Azerbaijan U-21): “We were planning to give a chance to our new players and we did so. We could not realize what we had planned at the beginning of the game. Our performance was unstable, there was a lack of certainty. As I mentioned before, it was a result of our preference for the new players invited to the squad and our enthusiasm. In the last 30 minutes, we played with 2 attackers, and we didn't give a bad impression. One of the points leaving me dissatisfied with is that we sometimes completely lost control during the game. There were some moments when we did not know at all what we were doing. Although we knew that Ukrainian national players were better in counter-attacks, we gave them opportunity to play".
