Warta Poznań lost 0:1 to Puszcza Niepołomice in the opening match of Sunday’s competition in the 32nd round of the PKO Bank Polski Ekstraklasa. Read what the coaches of both teams said after the match played at the Cracovia stadium:
Dawid Szulczek, coach of Warta Poznań: – I congratulate the hosts on obtaining three points, it is an important step for them towards staying alive. We came here with the attitude that it would be a difficult match, because the game against Puszcza always revolves around a draw. We knew that such a match was waiting for us, looking at the specificity of the rivals’ game. We lacked a bit of height in headers. It’s a pity that we didn’t have all the players available, for example Dimitris Stavropoulos, who is a good header.
We conceded a goal after a set piece. It hurts us because we saw a foul on Kuba Bartkowski earlier and we gestured to the referee. We have no complaints because the referee is not always able to see everything, but if the foul had been whistled, maybe there would have been no goal. We failed that free kick because the ball was going more towards the middle and we could have done more. There’s no point in fooling yourself, Puszcza was more dangerous in our penalty area today, but it’s hard for me to say whether it was better overall. The match was played in both penalty areas, we wanted to create a positional attack, but even when we got through to the opponent’s goal, it was difficult to break the defensive block.
Adam Zrelak was injured after the match against Widzew Łódź and did not train fully this week, but he is our key player and we hoped he would play. Today, after the warm-up, he felt there was a problem. We need to get him back on his feet so he’s ready for the next match.
Tomasz Tułacz, coach of Puszcza Niepołomice: – Congratulations to the players, it was an extremely important match. Now we face another extremely difficult match against a rival who still has something to fight for. This match is on Friday, so we don’t have much time to prepare. We are very happy with the win, but we are already thinking about taking the next step as soon as possible and rejoicing in the impossible. We realize that our rivals are not sleeping and it is still a difficult task.
Today we seriously threatened the visitors from set pieces and there were times when it was hot in their penalty area. There is great joy in winning, because the thickness of the heel could have determined the victory, and these points are very important and give us a lot of positive emotions. I think we deserved this goal with determination, but we were also a bit lucky at the end when we hit the crossbar.
We knew how our opponents defended and we had solutions for it. I think Warta is an underrated band. The organization of the game, the work of coach Dawid Szulczek and how difficult it is for this team to score a goal make us very satisfied today. We were able to outplay an opponent who is not an easy rival in terms of our playing style. This victory tastes double and I think it is deserved.
