Igor Jovicevic: We believe in the victory against Celtic

Shakhtar head coach Igor Jovicevic answered reporters' questions at the press conference before the UCL MD2 match vs Celtic.

– Did you already discuss Celtic with Marian Shved, as he has played for the Scots back then?
– Marian couldn’t help a lot, because Celtic changed very much since Shved has played for them. Now we are talking about the new team giving an excellent result in the Scottish Premiership with new head coach. They look convincing, play dynamic, aggressive, combinational football of attacking type. It will be hard for us to confront in desire, dynamics, play, challenges at the minimum, but we cannot lose.

– Can it be said that you adapted to the Champions Leagues after a successful debut or do you have nervous mood anyway?
– You always have a nervous mood. I think that this moves you forward. There is an adrenaline, sports fear, and there is no spirit and courage without fear. Tomorrow we will have a difficult match. We demonstrated what this team can do in the game against RB Leipzig, but our team is young and is in a building process forming the mentality of winners through such hard matches. We want to continue this process. Everyone must play in this match like in one against RB Leipzig minimum. No player shall fall off, everyone must demonstrate their best play in career. Today we will face the opponent being in excellent form. I think there are few variants of winning in this match both with and without the ball. In the previous match against Chornomorets we possessed the ball during 70% of time, but we did not score three or four goals and had some difficulties. And our possession in the game against RB Leipzig was 36%, but we played a crazy game and used the space. The question is what we do and how efficient it is in a specific period when we possess the ball. Again, we are waiting for a hard match, but want to enjoy it and convince ourselves that we can play on such level one more time. The team has good atmosphere, everyone is ready for tomorrow’s match, but we need a combination of many factors to have a positive end. We are ready and we can do it!

– Have you already got used to Warsaw or all matches of this season will be away ones for Shakhtar?
– Unfortunately, we cannot play in Ukraine due to current political situation. We reorganize ourselves to the things we have to accept in this situation, and Poland variant appeared few months ago. Training sessions will be held in Legia Training Center, and I am grateful to the club for it. Shakhtar sincerely appreciate this great, practical and huge complex. They gave us a possibility to train peacefully under conditions required by a professional club. At least the Eurocup matches will be played at Legia stadium and then we will see what will happen to the championship. Again, I am grateful to Legia for understanding our situation and provision of optimum working conditions.

– Did you now quantity of the tickets sold and how many fans from Ukraine will be able to visit the game?
– I hope to see a sold-out stadium. We would like to receive boost and energy from the fans to fight from the first to the last minutes thinking about victory and how to win it. They must be proud of our fighting qualities, we will play for our fans. Now it is not the best conditions for everyone. Many people who would like to visit the stadium tomorrow face difficulties, we understand that. Tomorrow we will play not only for Shakhtar, but for the fans as well. I hope that tomorrow we will successfully play the match together, although we a not the favourites in any of Champions League games. The favourites are RB Leipzig, Celtic and Real Madrid. We are modest, we understand what we can do, but if there is energy from fans, then there is nothing impossible in football. We believe in victory.