Jan Oblak admitted that he will fulfill childhood dreams, but despite everything, he remains ice-cold: “I thought I would feel differently”
Photo: Žan Pak
Now it’s slowly starting for real! Slovenian national football team arrived in Wuppertal on Tuesday evening, where they will conclude their preparations for the highlight of the season, the year, the decade. Slovenia’s opening match at Euro 2024 awaits on Sunday, with Jan Oblak and teammates facing Denmark. The fever in the land on the sunny side of the Alps is growing bigger and bigger, euphoria is steeply rising. But Jan Oblak remains ice-cold cool regardless. The Slovenian captain admitted that despite experiencing a major tournament for the first time in his career, emotions didn’t quite hit him.
“To be honest, I thought I would feel differently. But in the end, I don’t. We have an important match against Denmark. I’m not thinking about it being at the European Championship, but as if it’s just one of the games ahead of me, one that I want to win. I’m focused on that. You have to put aside all the distractions and prepare for the game to the fullest. In the end, results are always very important. We’ll do everything possible to be satisfied,” Jan Oblak made it clear in an interview with RTV Slovenia that regardless of the significance of the event ahead of him and the entire Slovenia, he remains with his feet firmly on the ground.
Jan Oblak: “Fortunately, we’ve succeeded now”
Nevertheless, the captain of Slovenia and a member of Atletico Madrid admitted that by participating in Euro 2024, he will fulfill childhood dreams without the slightest doubt. Among other things, he reminisced about the moment when Slovenia first played at the European Championship. It was the year 2000, and Jan Oblak was still very young.
“As a child, you see all this, all the euphoria, and you think about being part of something like that someday. You hope to play such games, to have people fill buses to cheer for you. I was seven years old then, and even at that age, I was thinking or dreaming about it. I worked hard, and luckily, we’ve succeeded now,” former goalkeeper of Ljubljana’s Olimpija, who has no doubt that Slovenia will be fully up to the challenge of the opening match against the Scandinavians.
“The impressions throughout the preparations are good. We trained hard. We didn’t win the last game, but the positive thing is that we quickly came back against Bulgaria after falling behind. However, we didn’t do enough to win. That’s okay. Ahead of us are very important matches, and we need to prepare mentally. The first two weeks were more about physical preparation; now we need to prepare our minds for what awaits us in Germany,” added the Škofja Loka native.
This text was automatically translated using AI.
Author: editorial Football Planet