The Shakhtar Donetsk captain shared his expectations for the upcoming Champions League match against Porto.
Donetsk Shakhtar is ready to start the current Champions League and will try to perform in it no worse than last season. Pitmen captain Taras Stepanenko announced this at the pre-match press conference before the start of the tournament.
According to the player, the Ukrainian champions have a lot of respect for their future opponents, however, they will do everything to finish in the group above Porto.
“You always want to say if we win all six matches, we’ll leave the group and everything will be fine. But I look at any predictions with a grain of salt and I try to be honest and sincere about myself and others. have a very good, strong a team, a new coach with new requirements for the players, for the team, and we are getting used to these requirements… All the young guys are getting used to these requirements.
Obviously, Champions League matches are games with a completely different intensity. You play against teams with more experience and more intense football – and I felt it in the national team matches. I can say that the team is ready, the team will do everything to get a result. We are all ready: we want to play and achieve results in the Champions League. And how it will be is very difficult to predict. I think last year no one expected such a result from us, but we went out and did it. This year you are asking this question because you expect something from us. And we, in turn, want to do everything possible so that Ukraine has a European spring. Therefore, you don’t have to talk, but you have to work, tune in to every match and do what the coach requires.
After the draw they asked my opinion about the opponents. I answered in Ukrainian, then translated it into English, and then into Portuguese. And this morning I woke up and saw a lot of offensive messages on Instagram. I don’t know what happened in the transition. I even saved some of them on my phone, it’s pretty funny. I think the loyal Porto fans were just defending their team, I liked that. But this is really a misunderstanding. Throughout my career I played against Portuguese Porto, Benfica, Braga, these are very strong teams. And that’s what I said about Porto. We watched their last games in the championship, where there were three wins and one draw. They were good last season in the Champions League and played very well. This team has a lot of technical players, a lot of players, like Pepe, who is 40 years old. It’s incredible! So, of course, we respect Porto, but we strive to play our football and show a good performance for our country and our people,” Shakhtar’s official website quoted Stepanenko as saying.
We would like to remind you that Shakhtar’s previous coach Patrick van Leeuwen shared his expectations from the match against Porto.
Correspondent.net will conduct a live online broadcast of the Champions League match.
New Correspondent.net on Telegram. Subscribe to our channel Athletistic
Source: korrespondent
I am William Jackson and I have a passion for sports journalism. With over 3 years of experience in the industry, I have worked in a variety of roles to improve the quality and accuracy of sports news coverage. As an author at Athletistic, I specialize in covering football news and providing comprehensive analysis for fans around the world.