Sabah head coach Valdas Dambrauskas has discussed his side’s upcoming match against Viking on Matchday 4 of the UEFA Champions League league phase.
Fanat.az reports that the Lithuanian coach shared his thoughts on the challenges of playing on an artificial surface, his team’s preparations and the opposition at the pre-match press conference.
“This will be our third Champions League match on an artificial surface this season. We have already played in Wales and Finland and won both matches. We will try to achieve the same result here.
Of course, we have thoroughly analysed Viking’s previous games. We have watched every one of their matches. We saw that Bayern Munich also struggled here. If UEFA and FIFA allow matches to be played on these surfaces, we follow those rules too. I don’t think the playing surface will be the decisive factor in determining the winner. Tactics, technique, psychological preparation and the atmosphere will play a more important role.”
Discussing his squad’s condition, he said: “As for injuries, these things always happen in games like these. We will play 8 matches over the next 28 days. That is not easy. But any footballer would want to be in my players’ position, competing in the Champions League. Some coaches would also wish they were in our position. We have brought 23 fit players to Norway. However, I will make my decision on some of them after this evening’s training session. A few days ago, we travelled for 6 hours by train and played a difficult match. We then spent another 6 hours travelling home. Yesterday, we arrived in Norway after a 5-hour flight. It is difficult to recover after all that. We need to focus on ensuring the players are fully ready for training and the match. We have analysed the opposition and can see that the Norwegian league is highly competitive too.”
The Viking–Sabah match will kick off at 00:00 Baku time on the night of 4–5 November.
This article was translated from Azerbaijani with the help of AI. Original in Azerbaijani
