Vardan Israelyan: "Kostov created an unique atmosphere "

28-12-2009 21:06

Vardan Israelyan, sport director of Metallurg Donetsk, summed up the play of the team at "Salon’s" request.

- We are dissatisfied with our 5^th position in the League table. We are guilty for it because we made a lot of errors. We must occupy higher position. I do not want to say that European tournament influenced on result of the team in the beginning of the season. But at the moment we are not able to participate simultaneously in several tournaments without victims. Then our key players were injured.

This summer a group of skilled players joined the ranks of Metallurg. With the exception of Oleynik who is healing his injure each of them come to Metallurg and played in the first team. It is important that the coach saw abilities of these players and knew how he would use them on the field. I can appreciate highly the summer transfer of our team. As for the top goal-scorer and assistant Henrik Mkhitaryan (who was called the best football player of Armenia in 2009, - comment) we wanted him to be the player of our team at the beginning of this year. Kostov worked in Armenia, saw the play of this player and told a lot about this player from his coming to Ukraine. But Mkhitaryan had some restrictions connected with army service so we dragged out this process.
About fair-play

As a result of this part of the season Metallurg became the most proper team of Ukrainian Premier League. Partly it is connected with the style of play of our team: we try to play "pure" football.

About Kostov

The fact that coach Nikolay Kostov established himself in Ukrainian football is not only my opinion. Everybody sees that he works with a good result. Is it a revelation for me. No, of course. I knew for what he was able and for what he would be able. Even in spring of 2008 I was sure that he had come to our team for a long time. He had confirmed our choice by his work and we extended a contract with him.

About Ukrainians and limit

Our main aim is to increase the number of Ukrainian players in our team. Not because of the fact that there will be a limit of foreign players. But because we want our local football players to play in our team. In the past no one thought that Pryyma and Volovyk would play on such level.   And what we have now? We see a progress of players. And I can say the same thing about our junior team which players are promising and in the near future may play in the first team. In short, our direction is Ukrainization, but if we buy any foreign player he must be very strong.

About winter projects

There will be not a lot of new players! We do not want to buy many players and later think what we will do with them. We know which positions we should reinforce. But it is sure that we will have new players. We hope that they will quickly join the ranks of the team as players who joined us this summer did it.

And now our team will have three practice sessions. Two in Turkey and last in Spain. Sparring partners are already known: on 14 January we will play against Ordabasy (Kazakhstan) – this is a club which beat our team last year 1:0, and on 19 January we will play against the champion of Russia  - "Rubin". Adversaries of second and third sessions are not already known. Kostov asked our team to play against a strong team in the last session. A agree with him because only in matches against a strong rival we can see our weak points.

 

"Салон Дона и Баса"