Warta Poznań won 1-0 in the match against Korona Kielce in the first match of the 28th round of the PKO Bank Polski Ekstraklasa. Read what the coaches of both teams said after the match played at the Respect Energy Stadium in Grodzisk Wielkopolski.
Kamil Kuzera, coach of Korona Kielce: If you are coming to such an important match against Warta Poznań, which knows how to play, you cannot lose the basic assumptions, i.e. 1-on-1 duels. We lost because we were absent. We cannot talk about winning if there is no determination. Tactics don’t matter because we were defeated today by a tough, manly game. It lacked character and feistiness. We made stupid losses that cannot be excused. We cannot run away from responsibility. There are a few games left to play and we have to do everything to get back up. We have an important match soon against Radomiak Radom and we will do our best to win it.
Dawid Szulczek, coach of Warta Poznań: Korona is certainly a team that deserves much more points than it has in the table. Unfortunately, in the life of a coach and in the life of clubs, when there is a plague of injuries, it is more difficult to score points. We had such problems, but we have them behind us and that is why we approached this match and our future in the Ekstraklasa with such great optimism.
Korona has run into these problems and I know what the coach and staff of this team are facing. I think the coach is doing a great job there, because Korona has developed a lot over these two seasons. And I absolutely don’t deserve to be so low and have so few points. Today, the loss of Korona’s players was a handicap for us. However, we had Adam Zrelak, who decided the fate of this match.
We went into this match in the same style as we did two years ago. There were players on the pitch with good characteristics in terms of the so-called second ball when it comes to pressing, when it comes to defensive actions and defending the penalty area and during set pieces. And it was visible.
I know there were a lot of fouls, but they resulted from our volitional qualities and how much we wanted to win the match. I hope that this match will give us good energy for the remaining six rounds, because we need more victories to ensure our stay in the Ekstraklasa for the next season.
In previous seasons, we aimed to score at least 40 points, which is a safe limit. It seems to me that fewer points should actually be enough this season. It all depends on how the teams from the bottom of the table score points. We definitely need two more wins to be calm, so we have to keep winning.
Korona may have looked bad compared to us in terms of volition, because we were in a good mood and aggressive today. They tried, but compared to our players it was not visible.