Score only good for statistics

Dnipropetrovsk — Kyiv: A game against the Norwegian team in Dnipropetrovsk was the last one on Ukraine’s national team’s calendar for the current year during which it has been coached by Oleksii Mykhailychenko.

The unofficial status of this game and the weak lineup of the Norwegian team, which does not have many stars anyway, as well as the referee invited for the game left virtually no doubts that the home team would be victorious.

A few words about Dnipropetrovsk are in place. Three years ago our national team played here for the first time. It was a qualification game for the 2006 World Cup against Albania. By that time Ukraine’s team had already won the qualification rounds and the game did not make a difference, but the local Meteor Stadium was packed. The game, however, ended in a draw.

This time the game was scheduled to take place on the newly opened Dnipro Stadium-a modern sports facility that has yet to be matched in Ukraine.

Unlike the old Meteor Stadium, which is located far from the city center, the new facility (still referred to as Metalurh — after the old stadium at the same site) is within walking distance from Dnipropetrovsk’s main drag. What else is needed, one would think, to attract fans to this most comfortable stadium? However, no crowds of soccer lovers streaming toward the stadium could be observed three, two, or one hour before the game.

I do not think that chilly weather and the late kick-off time (8p.m.) were to blame. Three years ago the weather was no warmer. There is something wrong about our national team if even in Dnipropetrovsk it cannot fill a stadium. Most likely, there were two reasons behind the low turnout: the team’s insipid performance in the qualifications rounds for the 2010 World Cup in autumn and the advance notice about the absence of Anatolii Tymoshchuk, Andrii Voronin, and Andrii Shevchenko from the team.

For the umpteenth time our team’s experimental lineup, including three novices (goalkeeper Stanislav Bohush from Dynamo and halfbacks Valentyn Sliusar and Serhii Valiaev from Metalist), started to look for its own game, playing against Norway’s equally experimental lineup, which had only one “star”— captain John Arne Riise.

Ukrainian halfbacks Serhii Kravchenko and Serhii Nazarenko delivered cutting passes to forwards Oleh Humeniuk and Yevhen Selezniov from both flanks, while our defenders Oleksandr Kucher, Andrii Rusol, Viacheslav Shevchuk, and Vitalii Mandziuk did not have much to do.

It is not clear how the game would have developed if the Latvian referee Romans Lajuks had not interfered. More than three years ago he helped our national team beat the Japanese team in an unofficial match by calling for an 11-meter strike in the last minutes, which enfuriated the famous Brazilian player Zico, who coached the guests’ team at the time. This time the same referee enraged our Norwegian guests by first calling for a dubious penalty kick into their net (scored by Selezniov) and then removing their leader Riise from the field early in the second half.

Both coaches said after the game that the referee’s mistakes had spoiled the game and prevented the teams from really testing themselves. In the second half it was nice to see Dynamo’s players Oleksandr Aliev and Artem Milevsky, who came onto the field and tore the Norwegian defense apart, passing the ball for a kick to the Serbian-born-turned-Ukrainian player Marko Devic from Metalist. However, all this was done against the demoralized, one-player-short opponent team. Despite their overwhelming dominance in the game, Ukrainians were unable to score from play.

As a result, our national team’s statistics improved: six wins, two draws, and one loss by the end of the year, including two wins and one draw in three official games. Do these positive numbers increase our confidence that in four months in London our national team will be able to at least end the match against England’s team in a draw, this being the decisive game for the trip to the World Cup?

Unfortunately, this and many other questions were left unanswered by our team’s last game for this year. The score is only good for statistics — that’s all.