Epress.am News from Armenia
FC Shakhtar Donetsk beat FC Karpaty Lviv 5-0 on Sunday in Round 18 of the Ukrainian Premier League.
Armenian national and Shakhtar Henrikh Mkhitaryan was on the field for the entire match and secured the team’s final goal at the 75th minute.
In a post-match press conference Shakhtar head coach Mircea Lucescu said:
“It’s hard to assess the game which final scoreline is 0-5. I believe that it doesn’t quite correspond to the developments on the pitch. The game was more evenly fought than the final scoreline reflected. We came to Lviv after we had been knocked out of the Champions League. Certainly, all the players wanted to prove themselves again to both the president and the fans. And I’m satisfied with what they did in this regard. My players showed a lot of character today. Perhaps, it was our best performance this autumn.
“While selecting the line-up, I favoured the true fighters, because I knew that the opposition were a combative side, with our encounters with Karpaty in Lviv being tough in the majority of cases. But for the goals, the sides performed pretty evenly. However we created more chances, also converting more. Nevertheless, we were lucky in a way, because Karpaty played the game that suited us. Thus, they played open football. Their defence shifted to the middle of the park at times, making it easy for us to penetrate taking advantage of those open spaces. Karpaty’s defenders took some risks, while we deployed our pacey strikers — Willian, Mkhitaryan and Douglas.”