"The most important match against Latvia"

On Tuesday, October 2, women’s youth team will hold a start match of the 1-st qualifying round of UEFA UERO-2019 U-19 with the team of Latvia.

On the eve of the game the head coach of our team Valentin Gavva told the FUR official website about the team’s preparation to the mini-tournament.

-Valentin Vladimirovich, there are 20 players listed for the mini-tournament. Are all the strongest present?

– We have all we wanted in our line-up, except for one player – Kristina Cherkasova. We didn’t have enough time to prepare her; her injury required much time for recovery and having discussed it with her club, we returned Kristina into disposal of FC Lokomotiv. All the other girls are ready and burst to go into action.

– You’ve got Aleksandra Lobanova – a player from the Swedish Championship.

– Just before the tournament Aleksandra stopped to be considered as foreign player and now is a full-fledged member of the Russian team. Her parents are Russian, so she is ours. She speaks Russian perfectly, has good relations with the girls, has been well accepted in the team, in spite of the fact that she grew up in Sweden. How have we found her? That was easy. We were tracking Sweden Championship, noticed Russian last name and it got us thinking. We watched her games and liked her; then I contacted her mother, several times talked to her personally. Just at that time Aleksandra was invited to the Swedish team U-17. We continued the dialogue, but didn’t press, just waited for a half a year, giving the girl an opportunity to choose the country.

-Before the tournament the team held a training camp in Novogorsk. What is your assessment of the work done?

-We’ve done good job.  We had very important fights with teams of top division – CSKA and Lokomotiv. By the way they played with the core lineup and it was a very useful experience to meet adult teams, conduct matches with high intensity and speed. We acted decently during these games and had chances to win, but small mistakes didn’t let us do it. So, we have combative mood now.

– At this tournament we face the opponents on the rise: Latvia, Montenegro, and Austria.

– Yes, we were lucky with the drawing. But the team isn’t thinking of Montenegro and Austria at the moment. The most important match for us is the next one, and we are totally focused on the game against Latvia. We, as the coaching staff, have materials on the second and the third rival, some groundwork, but we don’t throw the girls a curve with the future games. So, at the theoretical classes we analyzed the team of Latvia. They have two bright players: a ram-type forward who scores a lot and a midfielder at the inside zone. Besides, the Latvians have good flank attacks that often help them to split the enemy’s defense.  So, the Latvian team also deserves respect.