The Champions League is back and this Tuesday evening (8 p.m., eleven p.m.) FC Porto will be the first of the three Portuguese teams to take action against Shakhtar Donetsk from Ukraine, a team that lives under the echoes of the war and for this reason he will playing at the Volksparkstadion in Hamburg, Germany.
Sérgio Conceição, who will be injured without Marcano, Namaso and Evanilson, and Pepê, who will be suspended, started the press conference by referring to the difficult moment of the opponent due to the war.
“We are used to Shakhtar being the No. 1 team in Ukraine and being present in the Champions League. In difficulties, teams overcome each other, it is a difficult time for the Ukrainian people and we stand in solidarity. In this more emotional aspect of the game they try to honor the struggle and the difficult moment of Ukraine. They have quality players, not so many foreigners. These are games where we have all the ingredients to make it a good show, not because of the opponent’s weakness, but because what we are going to do in the game,” he said.
The coach regretted the injury of Marcano, who will be sidelined for several months, and the changes that will have to be forced on him as a result (against Est. Amadora he played with three central defenders): “My years here began again. has been remade, so we are used to it. I give the last Champions League as an example, between suspensions and injuries. Marcano, Otávio, Galeno, we are talking about five players, 50% of the team, and now we are talking about five players, 50% of the team, and now they don’t have them.”
Still talking about the constant adjustments of players, the Porto coach recalled a curious fact. “In these six years we debuted in the Champions League with about forty players. Looking at 2004 and 2011, good years for FC Porto in Europe, there was a backbone. I am not talking about market problems here. But every day there is a constant restart. I think this seventh year is like weddings. There is the crisis of the seventh year, as they say, but it seems that there are many people trying to create confusion and instability,” he said, guaranteeing that he would do the same. experience this Champions League “as if it were the first time”.
And he then made a confession about captain Pepe: “We arrived after two o’clock in the morning from the Estrela match. There was a 40-year-old player who went to Olival to rest, waiting for the next training, even with his family at home. That is what is less necessary.”
Play for an entire country
For the second consecutive season, Shakhtar’s matches will take place abroad, last year in Poland and this year in Germany, a country that also welcomed hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians fleeing the conflict with Russia.
To reach Hamburg, the Shakhtar delegation had to undertake an adventure of more than ten hours. With the airports closed, the team took a bus to the border, where they spent about three hours completing legal procedures, and once in Poland they flew to the German city. “You never know what happens at the borders. The national championship also involves a lot of traveling for away games. It is currently normal that we spend many hours on the bus,” said coach Patrick van Leeuwen.
The coach also assured that the team “will play for a whole country”: “It is the only way we can help Ukraine at this moment, give our young people opportunities to play in the Champions League and improve the state in which things are going Ukraine are to be shared.”
Despite being far from home, Hamburg’s stadium will be packed with Ukrainian fans this Tuesday, the vast majority of whom are refugees living in Germany.
“It’s hard to guess what will happen. When I heard that we were going to play in Hamburg, about 37,000 tickets were sold for each of the Champions League matches. That’s very good. A lot of Ukrainians live here and we know all that the Germans have helped Ukraine a lot. We want to give a good answer on the field and achieve good results,” Captain Taras Stepanenko emphasized, leaving a message: “Our soldiers fight in battles and we fight in the sports arena. That’s why This is our duty as citizens of Ukraine.”
Source: DN
