This week's guest on Udinese Tonight was Sandi Lovric. Our Slovenian midfielder talked about a range of topics with the club’s TV channel:
“I’m on top form, even better form than my first season at Udinese. I scored more goals in that campaign, but there are more games to come in 2024/25. I’m at my peak in terms of my physicality, tackling and my reading of the game. Given that I’ve been here two seasons I’d like to think that I’ve improved!
“I knew I could do well as part of a midfield four. We’d worked on this in training, and while my role changes in such a formation I still have freedom because [Jesper] Karlstrom plays more defensively. You have more responsibility playing in the centre as you’re at the heart of the team. In this role you see more of the ball and have more of an obligation to get the team moving.
“You need to put in the hard hours at home, too. We train for two hours and do video analysis, but at home when you watch football you observe what the top players do in your position. Even away from training I’ve got a constant desire to improve – anything you can pick up can improve you as a footballer.
“We’re doing well now but now comes the difficult part. Our game on Friday against Lecce will be very tough – we’ve got to keep on performing well as we’ve done so in our last three games and not rest on our laurels. We need to be even hungrier now. You can see that we’ve learned from our mistakes and we’ve got players with great experience in Serie A and beyond. This can be seen on the pitch in the key moments of games, where you have to know when it's time to speed things up or slow down.
“We’ve shown the right mentality this season. The more you win and the more points you get the higher you climb in the league standings, so everything looks rosier - winning breeds winning.
“[Jurgen] Ekkelenkamp is doing well. I’m happy that he’s scoring. [Oumar] Solet is a top player – he’d already played several games in the Champions League. You could see from his time in Austria that he was a top player – he’s really helping us out and I’m delighted that he’s at the club. He gives us something extra and works well with [Jaka] Bijol.
“As for the rest of the season, first and foremost I want to be fit and if I can score or assist I’ll be happy too. On a team level, I hope that we carry on improving, because consequently we’ll win games and climb the league table.”