Down to work, comrade!

It is common knowledge that soccer and politics are things which everybody claims to be a dab hand at. Accordingly, the appointment of the national soccer team’s coach is always in the spotlight and is considered a political, not only sporting, decision. The point is that the Ukrainian national soccer team is today, as it was yesterday and will be tomorrow, perhaps the only national institution supported by all without exception. It is more difficult to say that you do not support Ukraine’s national team than to come clean about something very shameful. In simpler terms, the national soccer team is really the last and impregnable bulwark of patriotism.

As recently as last November, this bulwarks received a powerful blow, as our team lost in Donetsk to Greece, which will go, instead of us, to the world final in South Africa. The blow was not so much in the very fact of defeat as in the circumstances under which this defeat occurred. Regretfully, the team found no genuine and sincere support in Donetsk. Some even secretly gloated over this for their own interest. From this perspective, the proposal of Hryhorii Surkis, President of the National Soccer Federation, to entrust the national team to the coach of Shakhtar Donetsk looked like a desperate attempt to rally our soccer at least for the sake of the national team, which is going to play at the home Euro 2012. The proposal was turned down, although the team was in bad need of a coach – not so much to hectically train the team for pivotal matches, which it would not play until after June 2012, but as to stop unnecessary debates and make the players apply themselves.

As it is clear now, the option of inviting a foreign expert was never considered after Shakhtar’s Mircea Lucescu had, in fact, refused to coach the national team. Meanwhile, the choice among national coaches proved to be extremely limited. Let us face it: there are no Ukrainian coaches now who have major achievements under their belt. While this country’s two leading clubs are coached by foreigners, there have been no achievements in sight on the part of the others in the past few years. Against this background, even the modest third place to which the coach Myron Markevych brought Metallist Kharkiv could be regarded as a major success. For this reason, the Kharkiv club’s head coach was justly considered the best candidate for the national team’s coach. But, to do so, Markevych would have to abandon the club which he had gradually raised from the level of mediocrities to that of leaders.

As it became clear on February 1, where there is a will, there is a deal. To solve the problem of the national team’s coach, Soccer Federation bosses “forgot” that it had earlier been considered inadvisable for a club coach to simultaneously work with the national team. In return, the Metallist owner, businessman Oleksandr Yaroslavsky, also “forgot” that just a few days before he had denied the possibility of letting his club’s manager go to the national team. This resulted in a compromise: the new coach of the national team will simultaneously coach Metallist. Another compromise was that Yurii Kalytvyntsev, another candidate for the position, was appointed assistant to Markevych.

It is too early and not so much to the point to discuss now the prospects of this team of coaches (to which Markevych also invited Semen Altman). Our national team will only play its first control match in late May, and its result will not matter at all unless, of course, they lose with the score 0 to 10. The appointment of Markevych has only showed today the direction and identified the person who will be from now on responsible for the ultimate result in our soccer. To dispel any doubts, the Soccer Federation’s executive committee set the new coach a goal to win the title of European champion in 2012. Why not set a goal like this to a team that has never managed to even be among the 16 participants in the European championship’s final tournament?

This proves again that the main — political — problem regarding the national soccer team has been resolved. A coach has been appointed and a goal has been set. All we have to do is say to Markevych and his team what used to be said in olden times: “Get down to work, comrade!” And we will all be carefully watching this work. For, as is known, everybody is a dab hand at soccer.