Dynamo head coach Marcel Licka answered journalists' questions after the Cup derby against Spartak (0:2).
— It's hard to talk after such a match. I was sure that we would be able to take revenge for 3 defeats this season. We must pay tribute to Spartak, which achieved the positive result. It was very sad in the dressing room, because we had two games before the Superfinal.
We let the opponent score two easy goals. In recent games, we have excelled at intercepting such crosses, from which we conceded the first goal. We could have played better in the episode with the second conceded goal as well. We could have come from behind, when Fedya Smolov went one-on-one with the goalkeeper. I'm sure a goal would have given us good impulse. In the second half, we made one or two extra touches. I asked the guys to play it easier. When Tyukavin appeared, we should have put more pressure on centre-backs and forced them to make mistakes. Unfortunately, we did not succeed in doing this. We were making too many touches and our play was slow.
— You did not make a rotation in the match against Zenit. Don't you regret that you fielded the first team then?
— You don't need to regret anything, but you need to learn from mistakes. The first conceded goal was too easy, and Spartak defended very disciplined afterwards. It was hard for us, and we made bad decisions in the final third, doing extra touches. We also didn't shoot much from distance – only Chavez and Carrascal attempted to do it.
If Spartak hadn't scored an early goal, I'm sure we would have played better. Unfortunately, this goal gave us a little mental pressure. And the second important thing was when we couldn't score by the end of the first half. Then the situation would be completely different.
— Dynamo won 3 games over Zenit this season, and lost four times to Spartak. How can you explain this?
— It's difficlut to say why it happened. In the last championship match Zenit had a lot of ball possession, made a lot of touches, moved the ball from wing to wing, but there was no threat in the penalty area. Just like we did today.
— What could you say about Fedor Smolov's performance?
— In the second half, we decided to switch to the 3-5-2 formation. Tyuka and he had to put pressure on defense. In addition, Fedya knows how to make original decisions. Then I fielded Grulev in attack. But, unfortunately, there were no good passes to our forwards today. Tyuka had one good chance, when he shot with his head, then he received the ball well, staying back to the goal, and wanted to shoot from a turn.
— Taking Babic's injury and the appearance of the relatively small Maslov into consideration, did you want to field Grulev earlier and switch to onslaught?
— This is not our style of football. It is clear that this can be tried in the last 10 minutes, and by the end we had Fabi, Grulev and Tyuka ahead, because they play well with their heads. But I don't remember that we had good crosses from the wings. That was the problem.
— Why weren't Tyukavin included into the starting line-up. Why did you replace Bitello?
— Bitello's sibstitution was tactical. When the score was 0:2, I wanted to field Tyukavin and switch to the 3-5-2 scheme. Tyuka played 6 matches in April, in which he worked very hard, tried hard, and ran. I can say the same about Daniil Fomin, who ran 63 kilometers during these matches. We will have the championship going on for another month, and we don't want to lose players. This is a lot of physical activity that needs to be distributed.
I talked to the doctor today. And I am very glad that we have 21 players in the team, and everyone is healthy. This means that we keep a good eye on the players so that they do without injuries. Now let's see who will play against Sochi. We need to think about it, because the game is already in 3 days. We need to endure it, and then switch to the classic weekly schedule of match preparation, when we will have more time to recover.
