Shakhtar head coach Igor Jovicevic told spoke the upcoming debut in the Champions League, readiness of the team and football during the war at the press conference before the match against RB Leipzig.

– Are you worrying before your first match or, on the contrary, feeling adrenaline and confidence in your abilities and the team.
– Of course, I don’t have any experience in the Champions League, but I compensate it with crazy motivation and increased adrenaline. We have to keep balance between playing with both our minds and hearts at the same time. We must demonstrate good football in the opening match where experience does not always play a key role. Sure, it is a huge factor, but sometimes young footballers do not think about consequences and this can be one of our trumps.

– What can you say about physical readiness of the team? One of your charges said that they have strong mental determination. Do you feel it?
– Absolutely. I feel it from the first day of training camp, I feel how the mood improves every day. And you could see in the previous match how the team has grown, how the fighting qualities grow. And you can not just play good football, but, when it will be difficult, a character is built in some moments throughout the match. And I saw the team in the recent game and it makes me happy, as well as three points. So tomorrow we will start the opening match vs RB Leipzig with such mood. They temporary have a little crisis regarding the scores, but it is still a good team. As for the physical condition, we gave a lot in the previous match. Playing with one man down for quite a long period consumed a lot of energy: morally, physically and mentally. But I hope that these few days we spent recovering and, at the same time, provided footballers with tactical information on what might happen tomorrow during the match: when RB Leipzig are in possession of the ball, when they don’t control the ball, the way they defend, what general characteristics they have. And we will have the entire day for mental preparation, but I can assure you that we will be ready for the game.

– No matter how the match will turn out, it will be a history. Shakhtar will play in the Champions League under conditions of full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. What message should the world hear through football?
– First of all, tomorrow we will show not only FC Shakhtar playing in the Champions League for the past 13-14 years, but we will represent Ukraine as well. Minimum that the fans will see tomorrow is us fighting from the first minute to the last like the soldiers fighting now for the country and all of us, so we can feel free. This is our team responsibility to play against such teams in the Champions League thinking about competitive results, but also represent the country during the war. Ukraine is currently the only country playing the championship within own territory with on-going war. I will say it again: this is a great responsibility and pride. And we will give maximum effort to represent Ukraine successfully.

– We understand that you will not reveal the lineup for tomorrow’s match, but how hard was is to select players for starting XI?
– Of course, you watch matches of the opponent, not one game, and you understand who can play against us. We paid attention on how we exhausted the team physically, who is physically ready now, who is healthy after the match vs Rukh. You select tactics taking this into account: I had some ideas and systems in my mind, but we made a choice and have clear idea. Today we demonstrated to the players what we want to do in defence. But, again, tomorrow’s match result depends on us. We will be brave, decisive, motivated, we will be able to stay open-minded at such stadium in the opening match. This will give more benefits to our team than being constrained and having regrets later in the bus after the game and thinking that we couldn’t do more. But will it be a difficult match? Yes, absolutely. A difficult match.