The coach of the Bulgarian national team Ilian Iliev commented on the upcoming match with Belarus from the League of Nations at a briefing. The "Lions" need a mandatory victory, and they will also need Northern Ireland not to beat the Luxembourg team, Gong.bg reported.
"In order to climb directly to the higher division, we need to beat Belarus, and Northern Ireland to lose their away game to Luxembourg. A draw will guarantee us second position, which will mean playoffs against one of the teams that finished third in the League B groups. There are still many potential rivals and we will talk about them at a later stage," he began.
"Belarus has only lost one out of five matches. We all know the results. They lose hard and play typical football. They will be patient, because they also have a chance for at least a play-off. We have to be focused. If we think about another match, it will be disastrous for the players. We want there to be mutual assistance and to change things from the match with Northern Ireland. We want to strengthen this. As for the change, I cannot comment and it is not good to do so, what kind of change there is. There are new guys and many of them are young", continued the specialist.
"The most important thing is that the opponent is extremely experienced and has played together for a long time. They only have one suspended player. We are expecting a difficult match, I said it after the match with Luxembourg. Our behavior during the match is important. What happened in the second half of Luxembourg is not pleasant, because we gave the initiative to the opponent. The most important thing tomorrow is for people to come and support us. Thank you to everyone who supported us in the previous match," added the Bulgarian coach.
"It is normal to have pressure for results, this happens all over the world. Our attention is 100% on Belarus. Surely someone will tell us what the result of the Northern Ireland match is. Let's not put things in advance “if, if“. The match is really difficult. Recently there was a match with Lithuania, which we had to win. We played fighting matches with Hungary and Serbia. We saw that people at this stage are at a better level than us, but we opposed them," said Ilian Iliev.
"It is not the most important thing who will be the captain. If Georgi Milanov starts as a starter, then he will wear the armband. And if he is not in the lineup from the first minute, then another person will wear the armband. But that is not the main thing. The main thing is to play well and win," said Ilian Iliev, quoted by BTA.