We were not 100 per cent ready
Saturday, August 29, 2026
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Press conference of Shakhtar head coach Arda Turan after the UPL match against Polissia
– First of all, I would like to congratulate my counterpart Ruslan Rotan on a deserved victory. If a team win a head-to-head encounter convincingly, it means they managed to prepare better and get certain things right. As for today’s match, I can say that sometimes a game plan can work, but that does not guarantee that it will translate into the final success – the score on the scoreboard. Overall, we played according to the plan I had advocated before the match, but we were lacking in a few areas: at times, we were not strong enough in challenges, while our ball progression with first touches and quick passes was not as intense as I would have liked. So, first and foremost, this is my mistake – both in terms of the team selection and the team’s physical readiness. Today, we were not 100 per cent ready, so I take responsibility for this defeat. My coaching staff and I will continue to prepare and analyse exactly which mistakes led to today’s disappointing result. We have a return to the European rhythm ahead of us, with matches every three days. We have a very busy schedule ahead and we will have to work extremely hard, so we will try to learn the lessons from this game and keep moving forward.
– You are now in your second season in the UPL, so would you describe today’s match as one of the toughest you have faced in the league? And you have a match against the leaders, Karpaty, coming up. How do you prepare the team for such an important game in such a short space of time?
– There were many difficult matches last season – the game against LNZ, which we lost, as well as all the matches against Dynamo Kyiv. But every game, when considered separately, is difficult and has its own context. As I emphasised, today we lacked precision with our first touch, and we were also not accurate enough with our passing. However, in my view, we were not that bad, despite those individual details that shaped the game in a way that was unfavourable to us. Nevertheless, I believe that those particular moments decided the outcome of the match. In my view, a team’s evolution in football is not only about defeats and victories: if you win, it does not mean that you have improved, just as a defeat does not mean that you have become worse. So I can assure you that we will be at our best when we face Karpaty Lviv. We will continue to learn from our setbacks and become stronger from match to match.
– Despite the defeat, I would like to congratulate everyone from Donetsk and the team on Miners’ Day. The question is: what did the team fail to do today and what percentage ready are Shakhtar for European competition?
– As far as the Champions League is concerned, unfortunately, we are not fully ready yet, and I have to be honest – of course, I am not happy about that. Sometimes in football, this happens when you reach a certain level of preparation, and then you can go through a period of stagnation. For us, it is important to get through this stage as quickly as possible and continue moving forward – towards growth and improvement. As I have already emphasised, today we were let down by our execution in certain moments, such as our first touch and passing accuracy, and to some extent this is normal as there are many young players in our team – we will have to work on this. There are many trips and border crossings ahead of us and, in fact, in my view, the biggest advantage in football, especially at such a high level as the Champions League, is having your own home ground. Unfortunately, for well-known reasons, we are currently deprived of our home, so I believe that our Champions League journey can be considered the toughest from this perspective because, unlike the other 35 teams in the competition, we are the only ones who are unable to host our opponents at a truly home ground. As I said earlier, we need to take something positive from defeats, even when they are as painful as today’s. The game against Polissia was not that bad in terms of our execution, but at times we lacked the ability to play more pragmatically, and that is unacceptable in such tough and intense matches as today’s derby.
– Watching you as a coach during a match, it is impossible not to be impressed as you clearly live every game alongside your players. What is more difficult: going out on the pitch under immense pressure or standing on the sidelines knowing that the outcome of the match depends on the people you are managing?
– To be honest, I do not really like comparisons in this context with the personal lives of my players, but to answer the question frankly, I was not as gifted a player as many of my players are. Instead, I made up for that with my level of football intelligence and my ability to read the game. Perhaps it can be divided into two types: when you are a player, you get most tired physically, whereas when you are a coach, it is more mentally exhausting of course. In such a responsible position, first and foremost, you have to trust those closest to you, and I consider my players to be those people. I constantly emphasise that we are one family, and that I am simply an older brother to them, not the head coach. So in difficult moments like today, my main responsibility is to start believing in them even more. And I will certainly do everything in my power to put that into practice.
– You are now in your second season in the UPL, so would you describe today’s match as one of the toughest you have faced in the league? And you have a match against the leaders, Karpaty, coming up. How do you prepare the team for such an important game in such a short space of time?
– There were many difficult matches last season – the game against LNZ, which we lost, as well as all the matches against Dynamo Kyiv. But every game, when considered separately, is difficult and has its own context. As I emphasised, today we lacked precision with our first touch, and we were also not accurate enough with our passing. However, in my view, we were not that bad, despite those individual details that shaped the game in a way that was unfavourable to us. Nevertheless, I believe that those particular moments decided the outcome of the match. In my view, a team’s evolution in football is not only about defeats and victories: if you win, it does not mean that you have improved, just as a defeat does not mean that you have become worse. So I can assure you that we will be at our best when we face Karpaty Lviv. We will continue to learn from our setbacks and become stronger from match to match.
– Despite the defeat, I would like to congratulate everyone from Donetsk and the team on Miners’ Day. The question is: what did the team fail to do today and what percentage ready are Shakhtar for European competition?
– As far as the Champions League is concerned, unfortunately, we are not fully ready yet, and I have to be honest – of course, I am not happy about that. Sometimes in football, this happens when you reach a certain level of preparation, and then you can go through a period of stagnation. For us, it is important to get through this stage as quickly as possible and continue moving forward – towards growth and improvement. As I have already emphasised, today we were let down by our execution in certain moments, such as our first touch and passing accuracy, and to some extent this is normal as there are many young players in our team – we will have to work on this. There are many trips and border crossings ahead of us and, in fact, in my view, the biggest advantage in football, especially at such a high level as the Champions League, is having your own home ground. Unfortunately, for well-known reasons, we are currently deprived of our home, so I believe that our Champions League journey can be considered the toughest from this perspective because, unlike the other 35 teams in the competition, we are the only ones who are unable to host our opponents at a truly home ground. As I said earlier, we need to take something positive from defeats, even when they are as painful as today’s. The game against Polissia was not that bad in terms of our execution, but at times we lacked the ability to play more pragmatically, and that is unacceptable in such tough and intense matches as today’s derby.
– Watching you as a coach during a match, it is impossible not to be impressed as you clearly live every game alongside your players. What is more difficult: going out on the pitch under immense pressure or standing on the sidelines knowing that the outcome of the match depends on the people you are managing?
– To be honest, I do not really like comparisons in this context with the personal lives of my players, but to answer the question frankly, I was not as gifted a player as many of my players are. Instead, I made up for that with my level of football intelligence and my ability to read the game. Perhaps it can be divided into two types: when you are a player, you get most tired physically, whereas when you are a coach, it is more mentally exhausting of course. In such a responsible position, first and foremost, you have to trust those closest to you, and I consider my players to be those people. I constantly emphasise that we are one family, and that I am simply an older brother to them, not the head coach. So in difficult moments like today, my main responsibility is to start believing in them even more. And I will certainly do everything in my power to put that into practice.