Ukrainian breakthrough

All the three clubs that represent this country—Metalist Kharkiv, Shakhtar Donetsk, and Dynamo Kyiv—have qualified for the UEFA Cup round of 16 and will continue fighting for the trophy. Moreover, in this round Metalist and Dynamo will play against each other—for the first time in the entire history of the participation of USSR and post-Soviet squads in European club tournaments.

To achieve this result, the teams were to solve different problems. The first match was Metalist versus Italy’s Sampdoria, the club which the Kharkiv players had beaten 1 to 0 in an away match shortly before: all they had to do now was avoid losing the home game. Taking into account that the Genoa club has major problems in the Italian championship, where they are among the second ten in the charts, and that Sampdoria’s leading player Cassano failed to come to Kharkiv, Metalist’s task did not look too difficult. They only needed to quell their natural anxiety and play at their customary level, which Metalist did in the first half, when Valiaiev and Coelho scored two goals into Sampdoria’s net. It was, so to speak, a matter of technique to bring the match to the victorious end, and their technique is at quite a high level.

Shakhtar was facing a still simpler task because it took on a second-string Tottenham in London. The English club’s coaches decided to rest the main players so they show a better performance in the domestic competition. Shakhtar had won 2 to 0 in Donetsk, so they were not expected to have problems in the second leg. Dos Santos scored the first goal at the end of the first half, so it was enough for the Londoners to make just one more goal to even the teams’ chances. A nervous game with a large number of mistakes ended with a fine equalizer by Fernandinho four minutes before the final whistle, which took Shakhtar to the round of 16.

What caused the greatest anxiety was the Dynamo match. Having secured a 1:1 draw in Kyiv, Valencia could just go through to the next stage by playing 0:0 at home and make use of the away-goal rule. But the very style of the Spanish squad made such a scenario impossible, so the two teams kept boldly attacking each other and luck finally smiled on Dynamo: Artem Kravets snatched the ball from the fullbacks and scored a goal that could mean an aggregate victory for the Kyiv club. But Carlos Marchena put in an equalizer in the last minute of the first half’s and soon after the break Valencia took the lead, when Asier del Horno pushed the ball into Stanislav Bohush’s net. To continue fighting for the UEFA Cup, the Kyivites needed to score at least one more goal, which Kravets finally managed to do after a swift counterattack 15 minutes before the end of the game. Securing a 2:2 draw, Dynamo has qualified for the round of 16 for the first time in its modern history, having shown not only high skills but also character and a will to win.

Now the Ukrainian clubs are in for a “USSR Cup” of sorts, for Metalist is going to play against Dynamo, while Shakhtar will take on CSKA Moscow. And while matches against Russian teams in European tournaments are a customary thing for us, the face-off between the two Ukrainian franchises will usher in a new era in our clubs’ international performance. Under the European cup rules, clubs from the same country are kept apart in the draw at the last stages of European competitions only. So, to be able to compete between themselves in European cups, Ukrainian clubs have to simultaneously beat the opponents in the earlier rounds, something that was done for the first time last week.

The old tradition of supporting all the Ukrainian teams in European cups will be broken not because of the lack of mutual affection but because there is only one UEFA Cup and many Ukrainian contenders for it.

UEFA Cup, Round of 32.
Metalist (Kharkiv, Ukraine) 2, Sampdoria (Genoa, Italy) 0 (first leg 1:0),
Tottenham (London, England) 1, Shakhtar (Donetsk, Ukraine) 1 (first leg 0:2),
Dynamo (Kyiv, Ukraine) 2, Valencia (Valencia, Spain) 2 (first leg 1:1).