Marko Gajić, Macky Bagnack, Marko Putinčanin and Daniel Avramovski played the system 4-1-4-1 and “operated” on the right side of the defence. At 17 degrees Celsius and the rain, which was pouring down on the players quite heavily, the conditions, in which the first qualifying round of the Championship League qualifiers against Qarabag was played, felt more like the weather during autumn than summer.

Around 4,000 fans did not witness many opportunities (the only shot in the first half was made by Putinčanin and he missed the target), at the end of the match, a corner kick by Donald Guerrier ended up being the only and the winning score for Azerbaijan. Olimpija has after Trenčin (3:4) and Vass (0:1) lost the first match of the UEFA Championship League in front of the home audience for the third time in a row.

Stolica is optimistic
“This is the worst thing about this loss. We, unfortunately, received the winning goal when we had the only semi-opportunity and the boys were severely punished, which they did not deserve. We deserved more luck. However, I’m optimistic about the future. With what we have shown, and with such a support from our fans, we can do a lot more. I believe we came out of this match much stronger. Qarabag is a very good team with plenty of experiences with such matches, however, we dominated. It is not easy to score. We will certainly get even better. We are still training and eventually, we will improve. The boys have certainly picked up the form based on previous preliminary matches. With the same approach and a bit more luck, we can progress to the second round in Baku,” was thinking head coach of Olimpija Ilija Stolica after the match.