No chance after Rome
Roma (Rome, Italy)— Dynamo (Kyiv, Ukraine) — 2:0
ROME-KYIV-Statistically, losing 2:0 in a visiting match against Roma in the opening round of the group tournament of the Champions League is a negative result, but in a strategic sense, quite an acceptable one for Dynamo Kyiv. Everything can still be improved. Five games lie ahead, one of them against Roma whose turn it will be to play in Kyiv.
Hardly anyone comes out of the Champions League group without failures. We could think this way if we knew only the final score. But for those who saw the game live at the Olympic Stadium in Rome (a truly Olympic stadium, unlike those in Kyiv and Donetsk, where no Olympic Games have ever been held), not on television, it is difficult to keep this in mind.
The first thing I wanted to do after the game was to get on a plane, the sooner the better, and find out that all this horror was just a bad dream. But I had a couple of hours to spare before the flight. The preoccupied players of the winning team walked past journalists through the so-called mixed zone. The Roma stars, led by the magnificent Totti, whose face is splashed on advertising posters everywhere in Rome, had changed into street clothing and were in a hurry to disappear into the web of Roman streets far away from the stadium. Our players appeared later, wearing track suits. The same players as always, Shovkovsky, Rebrov, and Gavrancic, approached the assembled journalists. The players were diligently fulfilling their duty to the press, offering banal answers to banal questions, probably trying to forget how they had just performed their main duty of playing soccer in Rome’s stadium.
In the early 1990s Dynamo Kyiv looked helpless in the Champions League, when everyone knew that our level was inadequate for the fight to win European Cups. Over time, after Lobanovsky returned to Ukraine, he managed to convince us that Dynamo had made a comeback to become arguably one of the best teams on the continent. There were defeats. In 2002 Dynamo Kyiv lost 0:5 to Juventus Turin and 1:5 to Real Madrid in 2006. There were other painful failures. But I have never seen anyone playing against Dynamo as if it were a low- class team, and our players submissively accepting this type of game.
At the stadium in Rome on Wednesday evening there were 11 football players wearing white and blue uniforms with the letter “D” on their soccer jerseys. All of them, without exception, were trying to do something: they chased their opponents, fought for the ball, and boldly engaged in combat, sometimes outplaying the Italians. That was it. From then on, the Dynamo players either lunged haphazardly or their passes were intercepted by the Roma players. The Kyiv players were not playing soccer in the meaning of a game played by well-trained soccer players, a team whose every member knows his place and function and performs according to his level of mastery.
It was clear that Roma, which was obviously determined to save its best players after having watched Dynamo’s last games in the Ukrainian Championship, had all of this. Their lineup was not the best complement of players from the Italian team, and those who were put on the field didn’t have to strain themselves. After all, Roma plays against Juventus in the Italian Championship on Sunday, and they were simply warming up with Dynamo Kyiv. The host team bestirred itself only at the point in the game when Dynamo missed an attack, allowing Mancini to pass the ball and Perrotta to score. Markovych and Fedorov, who could have prevented this, hardly distinguished themselves here.
What can you say when the Dynamo players engineered their first strike at Roma’s net in the 75th minute of the game when, thanks to Totti, who easily dodged Rebrov and Fedorov, brought the score to 2:0. Roma had several more opportunities to score, and the Italians were doing this at a semi-walking pace. I am afraid to think what would have happened to Dynamo if Roma had played fast.
The main thing is that Dynamo’s coaches have nothing to say by way of explaining what happened in Rome. Despite all our self-humiliations, the Ukrainian champions are not that much weaker in terms of its class of players than the leader of the Italian championship to play the way they did on Wednesday. They could, and should, have played against Roma as equals, even if they ended up being defeated. The Dynamo players did not do this. If they don’t, they will get the chance to repeat Moscow Spartak’s record, which in its time lost all six matches of the Champions League tournament.
Unfortunately, there is no sense in considering Dynamo’s chances in the Champions League, which are nil, because it is the game that provides opportunities for a soccer team. So far, the champions of Ukraine are not playing the kind of game required in the European arena.
