The coach of Vojvodina FC, Ranko Popović, believes his team played two entirely different halves in their win over Radnički 1923.

The players of the old lady defeated the team of Radnički 1923 at Karađorđe tonight, after a shift brought by the goals of Malbašić and Bolingi, and after the match, Popović congratulated the guest on excellent game.

  • I usually don’t have the habit to comment on the opponent’s play, but I have to highlight one detail, which you probably hadn’t noticed. He left his best player at home to get the team, and I congratulate my colleague on that move, because those who know everything about football don’t see such things. That is what I said to my players in the dressing room, not to watch the table and the points, to forget about that. Today, details decided the match, it could have gone in an entirely different direction, and Radnički could have won all three points, and it wouldn’t have been undeservingly. We have to be objective, and call things their real name. We repeated some mistakes, made a lot of unsolicited mistakes, and once we stopped thinking about the mistakes, and accelerated the flow of the ball, we starting playing much better. The first half is the real example of how we shouldn’t play. In the first half we all failed, but the second was an entirely different story. We moved the lines to the front, we attacked, we gave goals, we need to work a lot more, but I don’t want cowards in the team, this club deserves respect. In the second half, we earned respect with attitude, and that brought us results. I would love to play a much calmer match. We will use this break to additionally strengthen our team. Today, the bench contributed greatly, the players who entered, changed the course of the match. It is not the quantity that matters, but quality, because he cannot enter the game and do the job in 5 minutes – Popović stated.

He also commented on the situation after which Vojvodina received the goal at the start of the match.

  • Mistakes happen, but I don’t like that it was the result of miscommunication. There’s no room for those ‘I will, you will’, but once you’re after the ball, at cost of hurting the co-player, you get the ball, and we’ll count teeth afterwards. Mistakes happen in continuity, it is a matter of focus, and the fact that we want to introduce some new things in our way of playing, and that sometimes raises dilemmas with players, and then mistakes happen – Popović said.

After the representative break, Vojvodina FC will be the guest of Spartak in Subotica.