PRAGUE – Sparta’s football captain Lukáš Haraslín did well in shooting practice today. Therefore, he will not wash his boots before Thursday’s meeting of the final 6th round of the league stage of the Conference League with Aberdeen.
The Slovak representative also stated at the press conference that Aberdeen’s playing style reminds him more of a Spanish team than a Scottish one.
“In today’s training, I touched the ball three times and hit it straight into the corner twice. I told myself that I will leave the kicks dirty as they are. For tomorrow’s match, I will not even touch them, I will not wash them and I will not think about anything tomorrow. I will simply close my eyes, shoot at the goal and firmly believe that it will land there like today.” the twenty-nine-year-old winger declared with a laugh.
Sparta is sixth in the joint table of 36 teams and has a good chance of advancing directly to the round of 16, where the first eight teams will go directly. The teams in ninth to 24th place are waiting for the initial elimination round, which Letenský cannot lose. If they progress to the top 16 teams, they will miss two games in February.
“Obviously, it can help us. As the coach (Brian Priske) said, we’ve had a lot of games since the start of the season and by having enough representatives, it’s been even more. It’s tough when you’ve had the kind of outings we’ve had, but unfortunately we won’t be affected by that.
We will definitely go into the game wanting to win because we know what position the result can put us in. We will do our best to be successful and have two games less next year.” said Haraslin.
Unlike Sparta, Aberdeen no longer has a chance to advance. Haraslín therefore thinks that his team will be under more pressure.
“When we play games at home, we are under pressure all the time. It doesn’t matter if we are playing against promotion or not. We are playing against a Scottish team and you would expect them to maybe take the ball from the defenders, kick it to the striker and play that classic island football. When we saw them on the video, I thought we were playing the Spaniards.” said the former Lechie Gdansk or Sassuola player.
- Author: © List/
- Source: CTK