"In a stressful situation, you have to show your best."

In the first league (FNL-1) of the Russian Football Championship the teams have gone on winter break, having played 21 rounds out of 34. The tournament will resume in March. According to the regulations, the clubs that took the first two places at the end of the season, go directly to the RPL. The teams that finished in third and fourth places will play in late May transitional matches for access to the Premier League with those who will take 13th and 14th places in the elite. In this regard, Torpedo Moscow have a good chance of returning to the RPL.

The legendary club went into the break in second place, six points behind Ural and Sochi, who are in the transition zone. In an interview with Izvestia, Avtozavodtsy goalkeeper Vitaly Botnar assessed the past part of the season for the team and explained the departure from the RPL at the end of last winter.

-How would you rate Torpedo's performance in the first part of the season on a five-point scale?

- I am self-critical, so four, probably.

- What prevents you from rating it on five?

- Four is so that we don't relax (smiles). Maybe I'll give you five at the end of the season, if everything goes so well.

- If you keep the second place and go directly to the RPL?

- There is something to strive for, there is always the first place.

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- Before the season, did you expect that by winter you would be second without losing a single match?

- The thoughts, probably, were to move from game to game. And then we'll see where we will be during the season and with what gap.

- At the end of last season, three not the poorest Premier League teams - Baltika Kaliningrad, Ural and Sochi - dropped out of the RPL. And they retained a considerable part of their players. How did Torpedo manage to join them in the leading group?

- Look, the most interesting things are still ahead of us. Spring is still to come. When during it with each round less and less matches will remain until the end of the season, then the most interesting will come. Now it's too early to draw any conclusions. Yes, we performed well in the summer and fall. Now we can rest a little bit on vacation, and after the New Year we need to start working hard again if we want to successfully finish the championship.

- But still, why did Torpedo have such an intermediate result?

- Due to the team spirit. The team does not give up, always plays to the end, so this is the result. And such an outcome of many matches, when in the final minutes we snatch victory or escape defeat, reducing the meeting to a draw.

- This season you play your home matches at the Khimki Arena, not at Luzhniki, as in previous years. Is there a big difference?

- I somehow don't pay much attention to stadiums. I've played both in the sports town in Luzhniki and in the big Luzhniki Arena. Everywhere there are some pros and cons. Everywhere the pitch is the same for both teams: the same size, green, with the same size goals. There is a difference between natural and artificial pitches - I had time to play at stadiums with both the first and the second variant. But during matches both teams play on the same pitch anyway, so there is no difference here either, plus or minus. Maybe the only difference is that at home games the fans are their own. They will drive you forward, support you in a difficult moment. And in away games it is clear that their fans will be fewer than the opponent's.

- In the first 10 rounds you were in the reserves or out of the application. But since October, you have displaced Sergei Baburin. At the expense of what?

- Torpedo fans probably know me very well. And they know that I can be patient, wait. If I get a chance, I try not to miss it.

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- Why didn't you get such a chance in the first half of last season, when you left Torpedo for Pari Nizhny Novgorod in the RPL, but you played only in the Russian Cup and didn't play a single match in the championship?

- Situations are different. In Nizhny Novgorod there was a certain history. Torpedo had its own history before the injuries, but now it's completely different. So the main thing here is not to give up. You may not play for six months or a year, but it doesn't mean that you have to stop training. On the contrary, you have to make even more efforts and get better.

- What was the story in Nizhny?

- Artur Nigmatullin played well in goal, so there was no sense for the coaches to change anything. And I always lean to the fact that game practice is better: you won't develop in any other way. It is clear that training is good, but development comes through games. During them you are in a stressful situation. And it is in a stressful situation that you have to show your skills, your maximum. That's why in February, when the winter break was coming to an end, I returned from Pari NN to Torpedo.