As the final game of the pre-season ended in a goalless draw against Gyirmót on Friday (Rúben Pinto was replaced by Bence Kovács for the last three minutes), and then on Saturday we lost 2-1 to PMFC, using a lot of young players. Our head coach Bartosz Grzelak gave his assessment.

"I think that the team has made progress in several areas during the preparation, but of course we still have to improve in many details, as a longer process started six weeks ago. You could say that this period was like pressing a restart button, as many experienced players left. We have stated that we envisage the future with a younger team, the financial possibilities have changed, but despite this we have improved every week and I think we have reached a level in six weeks where we can compete against good teams. This weekend I got a lot of questions answered, I could see against Gyirmót and PMFC where we are at and what form we are in. Against Gyirmót, the players had a 90-minute workload, we played a very intense game where we had a lot of quality chances, but unfortunately they were missed. Of course, it is understandable that we had more chances than the visitors, as they are in NB II, just like PMFC, against whom we played on Saturday. Again, there were a lot of very young players here, it's always good to assess them at first team level. Several of them performed well, the experienced players Rockov, Bese, Bambock, Serafimov and Deybi Flores, who has been training with us this week, got a good workload and helped the younger players well."

We also asked the Swedish coach what he liked most about the preparations.

"We've worked a lot on improving team spirit, and I think we've made a lot of progress. Everyone seems to have the same goal, we can compete against strong teams, as we saw against Osijek and Trabzonspor. Of course, we will have to keep this morale up during the season. And on the pitch, I feel that we have improved in attack, and we have managed to keep up the defence that was stable at the end of last season, so overall we are stronger than before. The goals were clearly set before the season: the championship consists of 33 rounds, made up of good teams, but in all 33 matches Vidi fans will see a young, fighting team with a good mentality!”

The away match against Újpest FC starts on Saturday (29th July) at 20:15.