Following Beşiktaş’s 1-0 first leg win over Metalist Kharkiv from Ukraine, our Technical Director Ertuğrul Sağlam made these comments regarding the game:

“Coming into this game, we knew it wasn’t going to be easy match for us. Everybody saw how tough it was out there. Our opponent put up a good fight and stuck to its game discipline until the final whistle. In these types of knockout competitions, if you are having the first leg at your own home ground, you have to play solid defense throughout the entire game and make sure that nobody scores against you. Tonight, we did not score too many goals, but we also ended up without conceding a single goal. We’ll start the second leg with a real advantage, because they will have to come out of their shelves and try to score. It will definitely be a difficult test for us in Ukraine, but we have all the means to advance to the second round.”