A victorious finish or a successful start?

The first game played by Ukraine’s national team in Kyiv aroused mild interest. Why mild? Because many things may happen before the official World Cup play- off series begins in six months. No one knows what will happen to the players who came onto the field of the Valerii Lobanovsky Dynamo Stadium in Kyiv, wearing the national team’s yellow-and-blue uniform.

Our team has a new coach. Oleksii Mykhailychenko has replaced Oleg Blokhin, who had clearly exhausted his resources in this position-our failure in the Euro-2008 play-offs was painful confirmation of this fact. Ukraine has been in need of a new national team, one that is capable of matching the strongest teams on the planet rather than losing to them predictably, as it did under Blokhin.

As was to be expected, Mykhailychenko’s new team turned out to be the same old one. The starting lineup included all the familiar players headed by Captain Andrii Shevchenko. The former best player of Europe is going through some tough times now. Andrii Voronin cannot please his fans much either. Out of all the players who play on foreign teams and have secured themselves a position on the national team, there is only one who is in his element-Anatolii Tymoshchuk, who now represents a team from Russia. These players were the stronghold of Ukraine’s national team under Blokhin and have maintained this role under Mykhailychenko.

It does not make much difference who is assisting these top players. Despite Blokhin’s statements to the contrary some time ago, it is always possible to find players on our home teams who will not be inferior to their predecessors on the national team. The only newcomer, Denys Holaido from Symferopil, has proved this convincingly by confidently playing as left halfback and scoring one of the goals that brought victory over Serbia.

During that game Viacheslav Kernozenko was the goalie, while Andrii Nesmachny, Vitalii Mandziuk, Dmytro Chyhyrynsky, and Oleh Dopilka were fullbacks; Oleh Husiev, Tymoshchuk, Serhii Nazarenko, and Holaido were halfbacks; and Shevchenko and Voronin were positioned as forwards. The Serbian team, led by team captain Dejan Stankovic, included players from the leading European soccer clubs.

In the first half our team did not create any serious threats, preoccupying itself mainly with defense. The second half began on a somewhat livelier note. After a corner, Holaido kicked the ball towards the goal, assisted by Shevchenko who scored a goal. After a few minutes Nazarenko upped the score by surprising the Serbian goalkeeper Vladimir Stojkovic with a well-aimed kick from outside the penalty area.

That was the end of the struggle in the game. The Serbs began replacing players on the field to allow some playing time for everyone who had come to Kyiv, whereas our team’s defense was so well-coordinated that we had no doubt as to the positive outcome of the game.

So what is the conclusion? What kind of team is hiding behind the title of Ukraine’s national team? Is this the old team led by experienced players whose best years are in the past, or is it a new team capable of showing new playing quality?

So far only one thing is clear. Mykhailychenko’s team has demonstrated its ability to win unofficial matches against mid-level teams, like Serbia. It is impossible to project this result and the team’s play onto the World Cup play-offs scheduled to take place this fall. Today we can only say that in the immediate future Shevchenko will play for the national team like never before because this is the only team in the world where he is allowed to actually play on the field. It is only on Ukraine’s team that Shevchenko can prove-or, for that matter, fail to prove-that his career in big-time soccer is not over. In any case, our home teams have yet to produce a stronger forward than him.

On the other hand, we have watched how Ukraine’s team has clustered around this player for nearly 10 years, which is no progress at all. From a team that assists its leader, the new team has to metamorphose into one that is assisted by its leader. Then it will look new even with old players in the line-up, and we will be able to expect more of it than we have seen in recent years.

A 90-minute game is not enough time to tell whether Mykhailychenko’s team has good prospects. We would very much like to hope it does and that, in addition to playing a tight defense, the team will finally learn something else. There is ample time to do this. We hope the players and coaches put it to good use. Rather than the last success of the old team’s remnants, in the fall we want to think back to the March game against the Serbians like the first step towards a new team that is capable of making a comeback to the top of the world’s-and Europe’s-best.