The last game and no victory

Kyiv Dynamo’s last match of the UEFA Champions League group tournament against Madrid Real was no different from the same teams’ game two years ago on the same ground in the same tournament. The score was 2:2 then, too. Dynamo also began to score in the first minutes of that game. The Spanish team also fought back, scoring its second goal from a distance of 11 meters. The penalty was earned by Ronaldo, too. This is where the analogies end.

Whereas in the fall of 2004 Dynamo was competing against Real for first place in the group, with Raul, Zidane, Figo, Owens, and Morientes in the visiting team, this time the half-reserve part of Real’s team came, having already secured itself a place in one-eighth of the tournament.

Dynamo, meanwhile, lost every chance to move from last place. Everyone will agree that the game for the right to continue the fight in the main soccer tournament differs from a friendly match, where teams are playing simply for prestige. Many factors were named as the reasons why Ukraine’s best team occupies one of the lowest places in the Champions League. Dynamo could either prove that its September- October failures were unnatural for the team or confirm the sorry state of affairs of the Ukrainian Championship leader.

To summarize, we saw the second version. Dynamo played with its strongest complement to date against Real without the nine main players, and the ones that were on the field were not playing up to par. It was the Ukrainian team’s duty to beat the Madrid reserve players on its own ground in a “prestige match” and to win convincingly. It could have happened this way because only six minutes were left to the end of the game, when the score was 2:0 in Madrid Real’s favor,

But let’s go back to the beginning of the game. Dynamo also did not have a full group of those players who could play in the main complement. For different reasons Rincon, Kleber, Correa, Rebrov, Verpakovskis, and Sablych finished the season ahead of schedule. These players were only the ones who played for the team in the Champions League. Dynamo coach Demianenko practically completed the team from the players remaining at his disposal. The group appeared to be a good one, and already in the first half of the game Dynamo scored two goals, thanks to Shatskikh’s efforts. However, the problems in Dynamo’s defense were already apparent. When the score was 1:0, the hosts’ defenders slept through Cassano’s approach to their net, and only the forward’s inaccuracy prevented him from evening the score.

The game was generally amusing. Playing without Cannavaro, Europe’s best player this year, Madrid Real allowed their hosts to attack a lot and in various ways. By the 84th minute the score could have been 5:3, not 2:0. Afterwards, the competitor’s class emerged. It does not matter that half the guest team consisted of inexperienced players in the last minutes of the game. Despite everything, these were the players of Real, the best team of the 20th century, according to FIFA. Without letting up, to the last minute the Madrid players forced Dynamo’s defense to make a “productive” mistake. As a result, Ronaldo found himself face-to-face with Shovkovsky after a corner kick and scored a goal, and then Ronaldo was again unjustly attacked in front of Dynamo’s net, after which he scored a second goal on a penalty kick.

Interestingly, when the score was 2:2, the Real players grabbed the ball and ran to score another goal. Meanwhile, the home team was totally prostrate and hardly moving. This is not the first time this past autumn that Dynamo engineered a goal into its own net. If the team’s attacking group could have at least scored something in the current league (five goals in six games), the defense held a record: in 6 games a total of 16 goals were kicked into Dynamo’s nets. You cannot call this anything but a catastrophe.

In the fall Dynamo lost arguably the sole advantage it has had in the last 40 years. Dynamo has always played effectively in defense, which gave it a chance to decide the game’s result in its favor with two or three accurate blows. How much should today’s attacking group score in order for the team to win? If the team somehow manages to do this in the Championship of Ukraine, nobody will allow it to score “on order” into the net of the Champions League participants.

The return of Kyiv Dynamo to the Champions League after a 12- month absence was an unhappy one — no victory, last place in the group, and the main thing — the lack of playing that would allow one to count on a better result in the future. Once again the team has a lot of time — six months — to prepare for a new start in the Champions League. But will this chunk of time bring any benefits? Will they succeed in improving at least something? I would like to believe that Dynamo’s instructors know, or at least are seeking, the answer to these questions prompted by this year’s European failure.