The coach of Vojvodina, Dragan Radojičić, said today at the press conference that he is optimistic before facing Radnički 1923.
The Old Lady is in a series of five consecutive defeats, and coach of Voša believes that the international break was used in the right way before the most important period of the season.
– An extremely difficult match with Radnički is waiting for us. They will surely look for their way to points, especially because in the last round before the play-off, they will play with Red Star. Radnički is in good shape, they lost only two games in the second part of the season, against Proleter and Partizan. We used these two weeks to prepare for the match, but we again had personnel problems, minor injuries, temperatures, viruses, so it was not all we wanted. Regardless of all that, the emphasis is on us trying to win three points, which we desperately need, and to catch the connection to go to Europe. I am sure that we have the skills and knowledge, we have prepared a strategy, we still have some doubts, but we have also prepared Plan A and Plan B. We need to wait for the last training to see how some players have recovered, but the situation is certainly more favorable than before the last game, because three players are returning after the suspension. We are leaving to Kragujevac full of confidence. I extremely appreciate and respect my colleague Lalatović, with whom I am very close. He became an expert for the Super League, there is no club in which he worked, and without achieving success, he has now pulled Radnički out of the danger zone. However, I believe in my guys, they have quality and we need only one good result to turn the situation around and I hope that it will be tomorrow in Kragujevac – said Radojičić.
He used the break to change the way of playing, but also the way of thinking in the team, and he emphasizes that it is very important that every member of the team learns to cope with the pressure of playing in Vojvodina and to raise their self-confidence.
– The system as a system is the distribution of players on the field, and for me it is not as important as the balance in the team. It is important to me in which part of the field we play with the ball and how we attack. We have already tried that against Čuka, maybe in a smaller percentage, which we will now try to increase and play in the half of the rival. I will not deviate from my attacking style, Vojvodina must play attacking football. We haven’t scored a goal in five games and it’s normal for everyone to worry, but believe me, that will change in one second. The player just needs to find self-confidence, not to be afraid of missed chances. I know very well what the pressure of the Vojvodina jersey means and I work mostly on my players to learn to deal with it. I still feel the pressure as a coach, but at the same time I feel a huge motivation and obligation, because of Novi Sad, because of the fans, because of all those to whom Vojvodina means something. I want those players on the field and I next to the bench to prove that we deserve to be here – Radojičić pointed out.
During the international break, the Manager of Voša analyzed the previous part of the season in detail.
– Every coach likes to go through a certain period of time, especially in situations like this, when he takes over a team that is in decline. I used the past two weeks to watch all the matches of Vojvodina, I spent almost 50 hours to re-analyze our weaknesses and see where we have space for improvement. I noticed that we have a problem with high pressure, but that is not the only thing, so I have a complete picture and we work every day to fix them all. I hope that our quality will come to the fore. I am sure that these guys know how to score a goal, to defend it, but we must learn to reduce mistakes to a minimum. I also analyzed the mistakes from the previous game and saw that we practically gave two goals to our rival. As a coach, I don’t remember when I lost when my team took the lead 1-0, but some things happened against Čukarički that we must not allow anymore. I’m sure we used these 15 days to change some things, we trained hard, we had one control game in which we didn’t score a goal, but that’s why we got into a lot of chances. There is also an important statistical data that Vojvodina won two balls in the opponent’s half in the penultimate match with Radnički in Niš, while in the match against Čuka we won 12 and forced the rival to throw the ball off the field seven times. I think that is a huge step forward. The statistics are very deceptive, but some parameters are very important for our progress – Radojičić assures.
Immediately after the match in Kragujevac, Vojvodina is expecting a match with Rad in the Serbian Cup.
– I would be lying if I said that I did not think about the match in the Serbian Cup, but we are still focused on reaching all three points tomorrow from 2 pm to 3.50 pm. Only then we will dedicate ourselves to the match with Rad. It is a great thing to be in the semifinals and Voša must always be among the three or four best teams – Radojičić concluded.
The match Radnički 1923 – Vojvodina is on the program on Saturday at 2 p.m.
