Today, "Sabah" played the first leg of the third qualifying round of the Conference League. The team led by Valdas Dambrauskas faced the Bulgarian club "Levski" away. In the match, the home team won with a goal scored in the last minute. Sport24.az reports that at the press conference held after the game, the head coach of "Sabah" Valdas Dambrauskas noted the following:
"I think it was a very interesting game from a tactical point of view. We came to this game with a plan. Despite our defeat, I can only praise my players. I am proud of them.
I think we fought well against "Levski" for a long time. The opponent is a high-level team, but in the first half, there were moments when we had more control, and I felt that if we could have been a little more composed, we could have achieved a better result.
In the second half, of course, we expected that the opponent's head coach would find a solution to the pressure and look for ways to remove us from the pressure, and that's what happened. Especially until the 60th and 68th minutes of the game, Everton Balla played deeper and created an additional player advantage there. At that moment, we lost our compactness a bit, and "Levski" gained an advantage.
But after that, we also found our solutions, and I think the game continued on an equal level. And of course, the atmosphere in the stadium – there was a great atmosphere there today – it was a great advantage for the home team. I think that if there wasn't this atmosphere in the stadium, there could have been a different result.
In the second half, we had two very good scoring opportunities. Unfortunately, we couldn't realize them. But this is just the first game. 90 minutes are over, and now we will host "Levski" in Baku next week".