Nikita Zagdai, with whom they discussed what he saw in hot pursuit, is right: after the match, only one question revolved in my head. How could THIS team lose? Even without Lazaros Popadopoulos and Miroslav Raichevich, who played key roles on Thursday. In continuation - how in a meeting with the Poles you could score only 49 points? To the milestone, to which Dynamo walked 40 minutes in Sopot, in Moscow they reached in 23! And the unfortunate pan Eugeniusz of Kiev could only complain about the poor game of the wards, who in fact, as Ivkovich correctly noted, only did what their opponent allowed them to do. No more, no less.
Now Dusan Ivkovic will probably be able to admit that in the fall his team was not a team at all. This is easy to do - just look in a row the records of one of those fights and one of the last three.
As if two different squads - is it really a matter of personnel only?
Boyan Popovich and Travis Hansen still take on a lot. But now you can’t say “too much”, their attacks have become much more convenient, prepared, justified. One can recall with a sigh, how in Sopot, Hansen desperately tried to break into a strange ring alone, accompanied by the frozen looks of his partners. Fire, movement, nonlinear moves are now visible. There was a place on the site for the sullen Eddie Gill, by the way there was a dimensional Obinna Ekezi. Close to harmony is obtained.
Ivkovic is now on horseback - completely legal. And like any coach who has everything planned, he intensively shifts the emphasis of conversation to a team game, meeting any question about individuals with an unhappy expression on his face.
For example, on Thursday Sergey Bykov looked great - very handy, given the absence of Sergey Moni and Yuri Vasiliev, who were the ripples. As soon as he got up from the bench, he twice came from afar, and the second time - obviously unintentionally - from the shield, which made him immediately charged with a serious share of confidence. The defender of the Russian national team hardly left the site anymore, and Ivkovich shuffled the squad around him, “scrolling” Popovich, Hansen, Gill ... Bykov answered with a confident game, which the “team” coach reluctantly commented: “Sergey is a very good player and person. he is under great pressure, and we are working on how to deal with this pressure. "
The phrase about pressure from managers, under which many Dynamo basketball players are located, was the most interesting part of Ivkovich’s communication with journalists. “You understand what I'm talking about,” said the Serbian mentor confidentially, forcing those present to scratch their heads. Did Dynamo win prizes for good statistics? Or do agents demand it from customers, hoping for good contracts in the future? But is the situation in other clubs in Europe different? Sorry, Dushan, if something we misunderstood.
Curious was the final episode of the press conference. Ivkovich jumped out of his chair in anger at the ingenuous, but generally harmless request of one of his colleagues to single out someone from the Russians. "When will you stop dividing players into foreigners and Russians? My - komanda! Belo-golubyje! Vsem spasibo."
Nikolai TSYNKEVICH