Mircea Lucescu admits that "situation is tough" in Dynamo

FC Dynamo Kyiv head coach Mircea Lucescu answered journalists’ questions after the Europa League group stage matchday 2 game against AEK Larnaca FC (0:1).

- Mister, what has prevented Dynamo from succeeding today?
- Psychological issues. We dominated on the field, especially in the second half, and actually played a good match. We lacked the last pass. Our mistakes aren’t about skills or tactics, but about mentality. This is why we started the game badly and conceded the early opener.

Unfortunately, our goal was disallowed although, as far as I’ve seen, there was no offside. Even VAR makes mistakes.

We needed victory and we were doing our best to succeed.

- Do you agree that first 30 minutes were decisive?
- We started the game poorly. Players were making simple mistakes. Before we conceded, our player had to foul which was about psychological issues. That influenced the whole game as AEK knew how to preserve the score. They have good quality players some of whom featured in Spain, Portugal, France. They defended orderly and killed time skillfully. Once their keeper was holding the ball for over six seconds which is too much.

After conceded goal we tried to equalize, but our passes were inaccurate. Anyway, we have four more games ahead. After international break we’ll try to do better. Still, we demonstrated good football today. Only attacks finishing was poor.

- After the game against Dnipro-1 you said you could leave Dynamo. Has the situation changed?
- That’s a difficult question as the situation is tough. At some point I was really thinking of that. But someone needs to be with players and help them go through this challenging time. We must focus on the UPL and the Europa League. As I said before the game, we don’t have a permanent location at the moment, we don’t play at home, we travel for days while players’ families are spread across Europe. Thus, players can’t focus on football. But we must go through this.

The situation repeats. We conceded against Fenerbahce after corner and throw-in. We just presented the goal to Benfica. That happens due to mental issues. We have mostly young players, so probably stress is tougher for them than for experienced performers.