Game against Roma

- Are you surprised by the draw outcome?

- No, the draws never surprise us. We can get any team, and we must be prepared for each of them. On our European competitions way, we already experienced major difficulties: we managed to overcome some of them, with some others we dealt not so successfully. We have yet another challenge. I hope to overcome it successfully.

- Roma are headed by Paulo Fonseca. How well do you know each other?

- That’s my friend. We worked together at Porto. When he left Shakhtar, I came to replace him. He is a big coach with great knowledge and great quality of football. But the game won’t be against Paulo Fonseca, but against Roma. So Fonseca won’t play against Castro, but against Shakhtar. Both teams will have a clear desire to advance to the quarter-finals. It will be a really tight stage for both teams, with two very difficult meetings – initially in Rome and then in Kyiv. We’ve got every hope of advancing further.

- Fonseca has worked with most of Shakhtar players, he knows the club philosophy. Is this a problem?

- No, it’s not. These days, we don't need to work at the clubs we are about to meet with in order to know them very well. We analyse our opponents in great detail. Paulo knows the character of Shakhtar players. While watching the matches, we can’t always scan the players’ emotional side. Is it an advantage or not? We'll see. At the moment, Shakhtar must think about the things we’ve been doing up to now. We are facing another tough opponent, but we’ve already played against others and managed to advance further. In 20 European club cup games, Shakhtar have got nine wins, six draws and five defeats; two defeats at the hands of Gladbach, plus single defeats against Inter, Atalanta and Manchester City. We met some European giants on our way and realized that everything is possible. All doors are open now. For now, in any case, we will psych up for the fixtures preceding the Europa League ones - those in the league and in the Cup. And then we’ll switch to Roma.

- Shakhtar had six encounters with Roma and claimed four wins. Is maintaining this positive statistics in the Europa League your goal now?

- The goal is to make it further. We may be tied in two games but still advance further. This is my goal and that of the team. How can we do that? We'll see. Statistics is the kind of thing that isn't always true. For us coaches, this does not count in many ways. When I was talking about the past, about our path, I did it to make you understand that we’d already played against some really tough opponents, and in football everything happens in different ways. Sometimes we’re successful and sometimes we are not. We hope everything will go well this time. We’ll approach those matches being absolutely rock-solid, but there’s still a lot of work to be done in the Championship and in the Cup.