The victory over Saudi Arabia (4-0) kept the Ukrainian team with excellent chances to leave the group, and its leader Andriy Shevchenko brought a goal and an assist. However, Izvest correspondent Chermen Dzgoev began his post-match interview with Shevchenko with the question of an unexpected short haircut for a star striker.
Izvestia: Why did you decide to change your image?
Andriy Shevchenko: Image has not changed. The face is the same ...
Izvestia: But is it kind of considered a bad omen?
Shevchenko: Honestly, I do not think about it. Sometimes you need to throw away old things, change your old hairstyle ... Having cut my hair, I said to myself: the World Cup starts today, and you need to forget about the game with the Spaniards. She is from a past life.
Izvestia: After that game, the president of the Ukrainian Football Federation, Igor Surkis, said: if one of the players just wants to leave the room at the championship, he can go home. What, really, were such moods in the team?
Shevchenko: They were never present. A lot of negative information poured out towards the Ukrainian team after that defeat. Inexplicably. Of course, after 0-4 it’s very hard to talk about the team well. But I'm sorry that there was a lot of ugly information. Just ugly. All this talk about the fact that the team does not want to play is rubbish, they do not correspond to reality. Let's leave this game, today was completely different. Good one.
Izvestia: Today you were much “easier” on the field than in the first match. Are you in optimal shape?
Shevchenko: You know, I would not say that I was "easy". We must face the truth: every game is very important to me, it makes it possible to find the optimal form. Still, I had very little time to recover and get a game practice after a month that I missed due to an injury.
Izvestia: During the match, there was a rather curious moment when the judge gave a pass to Kalinichenko. And he rolled out a ball for you that you either didn’t have time to, or you didn’t specially run, considering that it was ugly to score such a goal. How was it really?
Shevchenko: The ball just slipped under my foot.
Izvestia: So you were going to score?
Shevchenko: In principle, this is a game moment, nothing of the kind happened there, because of which I would have to stop. The player did not lie on the lawn, no one got injured, we just got a little lucky and that’s all. And you need to use luck.
Izvestia: After this moment, Blokhin very actively expressed discontent at the edge. It did not seem to him by chance that you consciously decided not to realize this moment?
Shevchenko: I don’t know, the coach is watching the team differently than the fan. He is experiencing much more. I do not think that on his part it was discontent. It was just an emotion, because we missed a game moment. But the ball slipped under my leg, just like he accidentally hit Kalinichenko. So we went to zero on this episode.
Izvestia: Arabs did not surprise with their weakness?
Shevchenko: They conceded a quick ball, just like we do in the game with the Spaniards. And after a goal scored, Ukraine took the initiative, we changed tactics.