Turan: This is my mistake

Donetsk Shakhtar lost to Zhytomyr Polissia on their own field in the central match of the fourth round of the Ukrainian Premier League the day before. After the end of the game, the head coach of "miners" Arda Turan commented on the performance of his own team. "First of all, I would like to congratulate my visa player Ruslan Rotan on a well-deserved victory. If a team wins a convincing victory in a face-to-face confrontation, it means that, in any case, it managed to prepare better and prepare a certain number of things better. About today's match, I can say that sometimes the game plan can work, but this does not guarantee that it will be able to be converted into a final success - a score on the scoreboard. Overall, we performed according to the plan I advocated before the match, but we lacked a few certain episodes: at times we were not strong enough in the fight, also our first touch and quick passes were not as intense as I would have liked to see them. So, first of all, this is my mistake - both in terms of the selection of the composition in general, and the functional readiness of the team. We were not 100 percent ready today, so I take the responsibility for this defeat on myself. My coaching staff and I will continue to prepare and analyze exactly what mistakes caused today's poor result. A return to the rhythm of the European Cup is ahead, with matches every three days. We have a very tight schedule ahead of us, we will have to work extremely intensively, so we will try to draw conclusions from this game and continue to move forward. Last season there were many difficult confrontations - the same match against LNZ, in which we conceded, all matches against Dynamo Kyiv. But each game, when considered individually, is complex and has its own context. As I stressed, today we lacked accuracy in the first touch, we were also not accurate enough in passing. However, in my opinion, we were not so bad, despite those individual nuances that made the picture of the game not in our favor. However, I believe that it was precisely those episodes that decided the fate of the confrontation. In my opinion, the evolution of a team in football is not only about defeats and victories: if you won, it does not mean that you have improved, just as losing does not mean that you have become worse. So I can assure you that we will go to the confrontation with the Lviv Carpathians in the most prepared version of ourselves. We will continue to learn from our failures and become stronger from match to match. Regarding the Champions League, unfortunately, we are not fully ready yet, and I have to be honest, I am not happy with that fact. Sometimes in football it happens when you get to a certain level of training and then you can get stuck. It is important for us to move past this stage as soon as possible and continue to move forward - towards growth and improvement. As I have already emphasized, today we were let down by the implementation of moments, such as the first touch to the ball and the accuracy of the passes, and to some extent this is normal, because there are many young performers in our team - we will have to work on it. There is a lot of travel ahead, crossing borders and, in fact, in my opinion, the most important advantage in football, especially in football at such a high level as the Champions League, is to have your own home ground. Unfortunately, due to known circumstances, we are now deprived of our native home, so I believe that our path in the Champions League can be considered the most difficult in retrospect for the reason that, unlike the other 35 teams within the tournament, we are the only ones who do not have the opportunity to host opponents on a real home field. As I said before, we should take positive from defeats, even when they are as painful as today. The game against Polissia was not so bad in its implementation, but sometimes it lacked to play more realistic football, and this is unacceptable in such difficult and intense matches as today's derby. Чесно скажу, я не дуже люблю порівняння в такому контексті з особистого життя своїх підопічних, однак, відповідаючи на запитання відверто, я не був таким обдарованим гравцем, як багато хто з моїх вихованців. Я, натомість, компенсував це рівнем футбольного інтелекту та читанням гри. Мабуть, це можна поділити на два види: коли ти є гравцем безпосередньо, то найбільше втомлюєшся фізично, а коли є тренером — авжеж, це більше виснажує ментально. На такій відповідальній посаді ти мусиш, найперше, довіряти своїм близьким, якими вважаю своїх гравців, і постійно наголошую на тому, що ми одна родина, і для них я просто старший брат, а не головний тренер. Тому в такі непрості м