Martin Dubravka is facing a very odd international break.
The Newcastle United player is currently away with Slovakia and they’re set to face Denmark on Wednesday evening.
Over in Denmark, the country has no national team squad after a dispute over commercial rights between the players and the DBU. The country’s football association have refused to back down, and therefore they’ve had to come up with an alternative squad to avoid facing sanctions from UEFA.
That squad is currently made up of lower division players from Denmark and the country’s national futsal team. It’s a mess.
After that, Slovakia will travel to face Ukraine, but have to do so in an empty stadium, because there’s a fan ban in place for the match.
With his club in the bottom three, Dubravka explained to SME Sport it’s because they’ve had such tough fixtures, including against Manchester City, Tottenham and Chelsea, but the 29 year old believes it’s not such a bad thing: “We have shown that we are ready to play against the best teams.”
He’s got a point, to an extent, although Newcastle lost those three matches they didn’t lose any by more than one goal.
On the goals of this season at Newcastle United, Dubravka said they aim to really push on in the second half of the campaign: “The preseason goals were to finish as high as the 10th place last year, but we did not start the season well, although it is still very long. Definitely stay in the highest competition and later, in the second part of this year, we go for a shift to the upper rungs.”
