The coach of the Ukraine beach soccer team, Mykola Kostenko, spoke about the training camp in Portugal and the plans for preparing for the III European Games in Poland.

The Association of Beach Soccer in Ukraine's press service reported on this.

— Mykola Petrovych, a traditional question — how did the training camp go? Were everyone satisfied?

— We were in Nazaré in April, at the same hotel. This is — the surfing center. The main influx here is in January-February, and now it's relatively empty. So we were almost alone in this center. And the conditions there are very good. The hotel itself is a few kilometers from Nazaré, excellent food. There's a gym, there are conditions for morning training — the beach is nearby, and that's where we also trained.

— Did you manage to train on the main stadium in Nazaré?

— For the first two days, we conducted morning training sessions at a beach near the hotel, did warm-ups right on its territory, and used the gym as well. On the sand directly, we had workouts focusing on functional orientation to develop speed, strength qualities, specific endurance, and of course, ball work. In the evenings, we trained right next to the stadium.

There are several fields there — one central and three auxiliary ones. They have markings, small stands, the only downside is that they get more wind than the main one. Although the weather was generally good: the first three days — sunny, then — cloudy and even a little rain, but warm — around 23–25 degrees. You could say that the weather contributed to our fundamental gathering.

During evening training sessions, we focused on tactical aspects, worked on interaction in defense and attack. And of course, there were sparring matches where Alex and I divided them into teams. I would like to thank the players from the coaching staff for their professionalism. We had such intense practices that you wouldn't see in every control match.

— So it seems that you didn't manage to play any friendly matches with other opponents?

— Many Portuguese teams were preparing for the Euro Winners Cup, and they had their own training programs. We are not disappointed because of this, as the games we played among ourselves were interesting, emotional, and very fast. And in the last three days, we conducted such interesting sparring matches.

— Many of our team members stayed in Nazaré to play for 'VIT' and 'Artur Music' in the beach league championship. Who returned with you to Ukraine?

— Pashko, Levchenko, Shchitnik, Sabatyuk. And even in this situation, we are already planning training sessions at Hydro Park this week — on Tuesday/Thursday. We will involve players from the extended list in these trainings. There's Pantelychuk, there's Syrenko, and other guys too. We'll invite all of the closest candidates for the team to training. And we are waiting for the main squad to return from the Euro Winners Cup.

— Are you departing for the European Games on June 23?

— Yes, those who will play in the Euro Winners Cup will return around the 20th. So we'll conduct two or three training sessions without them. The other team members will still play for their teams in the upcoming weekend matches in Kiev's championship. Plus, they have club practices as well. So we are currently preparing in Kiev, waiting for the guys from Nazaré and planning to depart for Poland on June 23.