Sport24.az
Vice-president of "Araz-Nakhchivan", which will represent our country in the Futsal Champions League in the new season, Mahmud Sadigov, spoke to AZERTAC. Sport24.az presents the interview.
- How is your preparation for the new season going?
- The team started training on the 26th of last month, although not with the full squad. We continue our preparations for the new season. Now the whole team is together. Our mood is very good. We had a test match with "Neftchi". We will meet them again today. We want to see and reveal the shortcomings in the preparation matches. We are ambitious in all the tournaments we will compete in. The Federation is also doing its best to help the club succeed in European Cups.
- "Araz-Nakhchivan" will face Northern Ireland's "Sparta Belfast" on August 27, Scotland's "PYF Saltires" a day later, and local "Ljuti Krajisnici" (Austria) on August 30 in the preliminary stage of the Champions League. How do you assess their chances?
- We are currently conducting our observations. We are preparing for the Champions League at a high level. As you know, we have not been able to achieve the desired results in this tournament in recent years. In fact, we play well, but in the end there is some problem and we lose. The coaching staff is watching video recordings of past matches. There is great confidence in the team.
- What do you mean by problem?
- I think that there were certain mistakes of the coaching staff here. We were behind the opponents in terms of tactics and players. For example, "Araz-Nakhchivan" was considered the favorite of the match we played with the Swedish representative "Uddevalla" last season. However, due to small mistakes, the opponent defeated us. We have analyzed well where we made mistakes and we don't want to repeat those things this year. We are with head coach Yevgeny Kuksevich. We are constantly supporting him to achieve successful results in the Champions League.
- Are new transfers expected?
- Currently, our team is fully staffed. We can take 14 players to the Champions League. There are 8 local and 7 foreign players in the team. We will keep the young goalkeeper from the U-19 team in Baku as a reserve force. If we get out of the group stage to the play-offs, there will be another transfer.
- What are your goals in the Azerbaijan Futsal League?
- We want to become champions again and represent Azerbaijan in Europe.
