The match turned out to be difficult for us. If in the first half our defence was quite solid and we weren’t giving any chances to the opponent, in the second half we unfortunately allowed them to score. We had an advantage tonight, but sadly, we weren’t able to convert it into the quality chances. The luck was on the opponent’s side today as they managed to create opportunities to score for themselves and did it. On our end, we didn’t use the chances we had and we weren’t creating as many of them as we would’ve liked. Unfortunately, we lost today. Now we’re going to be recovering and getting ready for the next match.
Daku is Rubin’s main offensive player. What did you have to do in order to stop him today? Was the substitution of Rodrigão connected to the way Daku played?
Daku is a good player. He was able to score from a very tricky chance. Speaking of Rodrigão being substituted, it wasn’t about Daku at all. We needed to increase our speed, therefore we changed our formation a little to be able to press more and we put another player in offense. As for changing Alip to Erakovic, this position is not the best for Nuraly and it takes more energy to play there. It wasn’t easy for him to play on this specific position for the whole 90 minutes.
Rubin were stalling and the medics were rushing in to the players multiple times only for them to get up on their own and get off the pitch without any assistance. Was the referee able to prevent this stalling?
The referee is on the pitch for a reason. I get that if the players had a collision you have to stop the game, especially if it’s a possible head injury. If the player fell down on his own and the referee stops the game… This is not as clear to me along with a couple of other things the referee did. Although a referee is a referee, and our game is our game.
Krasnodar played at the same time and won, so now they’re only one point behind. What would you say on the competition for the title, how much nerve-racking has it become? You have a quite difficult match against Dynamo Moscow ahead too.
We’ve always been serious about the league standings. Through the journalists’ eyes it might’ve looked different, but we have always been focused. We know that it’s difficult and everybody loses points. Right now we can’t make any mistakes. Both Dynamo and Krasnodar are the teams that could compete for the first place. We’re also going to keep competing for it. Now everything depends on us. We’ll see what the future holds.
Douglas Santos could return on the pitch after the suspension, why did you keep him on the bench? Why were Artur and Pedro among the substitutes as well?
Speaking of Douglas, he didn’t play due to the medical reasons today. As for Pedro, he wasn’t playing as active as we would’ve wanted in the previous match, so Andrey Mostovoy came on instead of him. Lastly, Artur did a lot for the team in the last game, and Mantuan did well in that match too. Today we decided to allow Gustavo start on this position, he deserved it.
