Rafael Urazbakhtin, head coach of Almaty's Kairat, gave his comments after his team's match against Latvian side Riga FC, which ended in a draw, infohub.kz reports.
According to the coach, the game unfolded as expected: the opponent held most of the initiative, while the Kazakh club played on the counterattack.
The coach stressed that even despite their mistakes, Kairat created enough good chances to score a second goal and snatch the win.
"We expected the game to unfold this way: the opponent would have the initiative, and we would defend more and play on the counterattack. That's how it turned out. We scored an early goal, but we didn't quite sort things out on the episode where we conceded. I told the players to play a certain way, but not everything worked out as it should in the first half. We stretched out too much and let the opponent control the ball and use the space between our lines. That's how it happened that we conceded too easily. But at halftime we made certain adjustments and gave the players some pointers.
And in the second half, in principle, we played the right way. The only thing was that we lacked a bit of freshness. Even with all our mistakes, we created enough chances to score a second goal. I think that for a first match, a draw away from home is a normal result. We're happy with the point we earned.
Right now the main thing is to recover and get back home. In two days there's a match in the Kazakhstan championship, and we'll put all our efforts into it," Urazbakhtin noted.
Kairat's next match in the Conference League will be at home on October 22 against Greece's Panathinaikos.
Earlier, Kursiv wrote that Kairat opened its football Conference League campaign with a draw in Riga.