The Turkmenistan national football team arrived in Dubai today to prepare for the qualifying tournament of the 2022 FIFA World Cup starting in six days in Asia. During the training camp, the team stayed at the Gulf Court Hotels to prepare for the first qualifying match of the 2022 FIFA World Cup with the team of Sri Lanka, which will be held on September 5 in Colombo. Before flying to the UAE, the Turkmenportal correspondent took an exclusive interview with the head coach of the national team of Turkmenistan, 52-year-old Croatian specialist Ante Miše.
– Before the start of the qualification tournament of the 2022 World Cup there is very little time left. Do you feel any excitement before the start? How ready is the national team of Turkmenistan for the upcoming qualifying round games?
– We are ready. We are watching the players of our team, we have studied and conducted a lot of analytical work on the game of our rivals, and first of all the Sri Lanka team, the match with which the team of Turkmenistan will start in the qualifying tournament of the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
– The Sri Lankan team takes the 200th place in the FIFA ranking. In your opinion, will there be an underestimation of the opponent in the next match?
– Of course not! We respect the opponent, despite the fact that he is lower in the FIFA ranking than Turkmenistan. We watched the qualifying match of the previous qualifying round of the 2018 FIFA World Сup Guam – Turkmenistan, which took place in 2015 (then the national team of Turkmenistan lost 0-1 in away matches – editorial note). That match was a good lesson. For us and for the team, starting three points is very important. They can play a big role in the future.
– So, the task is to win the Sri Lankan team?
– Yes! We prepare our team only for victory. In this match, only victory is needed.
– The FC Altyn Asyr is the base for the national team of Turkmenistan, in which 8 players from this club are represented. Could you be alarmed at the weak defense game that FC Altyn Asyr demonstrated in the last match of the 2019 AFC Cup with Hanoi FC?
– I'm not worried about the line of defense. Club defense and national team defense are two different things. In the defense of the national team, not only FC Altyn Asyr footballers play, there are players from FC Ahal and FC Ashgabat. The matches for the 2019 AFC Cup and for the national team are also different from each other. The coach in the club has one attitude for the game, the coach in the national team has another. There are completely different priorities, I don’t worry about it.
– Do you already have the contours of the starting lineup of the team in the match against Sri Lanka?
– No, we still do not have the starting lineup, it's too early to talk about it. We still have five days in Dubai, where we will conduct training, look at the functional state of the players, how much this or that football player will be ready for the match. And there it will already be visible.
– Well-known Turkmen football players Ruslan Mingazov and Ahmet Atayev have recently been injured. Although they did not take part in a friendly match with Uganda, but nevertheless for the national team this is a significant loss?
– We have enough qualified, high-quality football players. Of course, I’m upset that Mingazov and Atayev were injured and will not be able to take part in the upcoming games. But this is football.
– In October, the national team of Turkmenistan plans to hold a friendly match with Kuwait. Is this your personal arrangement with Croatian coach Romeo Jozak, who leads the Kuwait team?
– Yes, the head coach of the Kuwait national team is also a citizen of Croatia, and he is my good friend. It so happened that the national teams of Turkmenistan and Kuwait miss the fourth round of the qualifying tournament of the 2022 FIFA World Cup. We phoned, discussed the situation, he was not against holding an official friendly match. We have secured our agreement with an agreement between the Football Federations of Turkmenistan and Kuwait. It will be very nice for me to see an old friend and play against the Kuwait team. This will be the official FIFA friendly match.
– What task will you have in this match? Are you going to view new players?
– Now I do not think about the game with Kuwait, all thoughts about the game against the national team of Sri Lanka. For the national team of Turkmenistan, it is very important to start with a victory in the 2022 FIFA World Cup qualification.
– We wish you and the national team of Turkmenistan good luck!
– Thank!
