Sandro Perković: “We deserve to play in Europe and we will fight for victory”

FC Noah’s head coach Sandro Perković shared his expectations at the pre-match press conference ahead of the first leg of the UEFA Conference League play-off against Slovenia’s Olimpija Ljubljana. The coach highlighted the opponent’s ambitions, his players’ special motivation, and stressed that Noah is ready to fight only for victory.

The match Olimpija Ljubljana (Slovenia) – Noah (Armenia) will take place on August 21 in Ljubljana. Kick-off at 22:00 Yerevan time.

Sandro Perković’s press conference before the match

“We are going to play against the champion of Slovenia. After several unsuccessful games, they changed their head coach, which also shows the club’s high ambitions. Olimpija is a good team, but so are we, and we are looking forward to tomorrow’s match with great motivation.

It was very difficult to prepare the players for the match against Gandzasar because there was little time after the disappointing game with Lincoln in the Europa League. But after beating Gandzasar, the atmosphere and mood in the team improved. Immediately after that game, we started preparations for the Conference League. We want to show that we are better and that we deserve to play in the Conference League. We must prove that the matches against Lincoln were just setbacks and that we are worthy of European competition.

Yes, we have two players who previously played for Olimpija (Sualehe and Boakye), but as David said, their coach has already changed. In football, everything changes very quickly. Of course, for David and Eric this will be a special game. I hope they will have extra motivation to show their best performance.

I carefully analyzed the match against Lincoln and cannot say anything bad about my players. We were better on the pitch, created 6–7 good chances, but failed to score. Football can be cruel sometimes: if you don’t score, you don’t win. But fortunately, we now have a second chance to prove that we deserve to play in Europe.

Tomorrow two strong teams will face each other, and I am sure the outcome of the tie will be decided in the return leg in Abovyan.

For tomorrow I will ask my players, as always, to stay motivated and focused. To understand what we want to achieve, to be brave, creative, and play football at the highest level.

From my first day at Noah until my last, it will always be the same: in every match, no matter where or against whom we play, we will go out only for victory.

If we recall our previous away games this season, against Budućnost we could have easily won 3:1 if we had converted a penalty three minutes before the end, but instead we conceded. Against Ferencváros the game could have gone our way at any moment, it was very close to a win, but it didn’t happen. And against Lincoln, we scored a winning goal from a free-kick, but it was disallowed. Three setbacks in three matches where we were very close to victory. I hope that tomorrow luck will finally be on our side,” – said Sandro Perković.

See also:

• “Everything is familiar here, but now I play for Noah” — David Sualehe

• Noah announced the squad for the Conference League play-off matches

• Olimpija head coach: “Chances against Noah are 50/50”