A game you don’t forget

According to an old soccer saying, in big-time soccer the game is forgotten but the results are remembered. Will this be true of the Ukrainian national team’s first game against Georgia in the European 2008 qualifying competition? Is it worth counting our players’ numerous mistakes that almost called into question Ukraine’s prospects in that extremely difficult tournament, when only the first step was made?

Before the match with Georgia practically all soccer specialists, not to mention rank and file fans, believed that the Ukrainian team would win. Why shouldn’t our players beat the Georgians, who three days earlier were soundly routed by the French team (0:3) on their home turf?

We are now one of the world’s leading soccer countries, if you consider the outcome of the last World Cup. Georgia has yet to reach such heights. The Ukrainian team has experience in performing at the highest level, whereas the Georgians have nothing except for a few wins against the backdrop of constant failures.

Fortunately, the coaches of the Ukrainian national team realistically assessed the opponent’s potential and for the debut game put a team on the field that could hardly be described as an attacking one.

The Ukrainian national team’s two center half-backs, Sheliaev and Tymoshchuk, who are known for their skill at frustrating enemy attacks, were put on the field, so we had practically no one to secure real dominance in the midfield. Our only attacker, Shevchenko, was supposed to rely only on his experience and skill after flank attacks by Husiev and Rotan, on whom our national team was apparently counting.

The start of the match showed that our intentions must have been predicted by the Georgian team’s coach, Topmeller. The Ukrainians’ attempts to surge ahead were swamped by the guest team’s solid defense. Rebrov got lost somewhere in the field and the Ukrainian team’s defenses, where Husin was forcible “dispatched,” had a hard time beating off the Georgian forwards’ quick and practiced attacks. Another fact to be considered is that four players from the Georgian national team are competing in Ukraine’s championships, so our team’s performance was nothing new to them.

The team coach’s decision to send practically the same players who recently played in the world finals in Germany onto the field was made out of dire need. Blokhin simply has no other players to enhance his team’s performance. Tkachenko was the only exception, who was a defender on the right side of the field. But this exception only confirmed the not so optimistic state of affairs of the Ukrainian national team’s reserve. The only advantage our team had, besides playing on its home turf, was its experience of German stadiums. It added confidence, something the Georgian team lacked. This experience helped the Ukrainian players score the first goal after Shevchenko’s accurate hit was assisted by a somewhat awkward pass from the right flank.

This success, even though it didn’t seem totally logical, should have brought the game to the necessary final result. However, the Georgian players were of a different opinion, so a few minutes later the experienced Avergadze broke through Dynamo’s defenses and aimed a neat corner kick that the Ukrainian goalie Shovkovsky could not deflect.

No one knows how everything would have ended if not for the Georgian team’s second rather curious goal scored in the second half of the match, the result of Demetradze’s penalty kick missed by our defenders and goalie. The ball hit the Ukrainian net, which presented Blokhin’s team with a very complicated task. Our team has long been in the habit of losing games when the opponent is leading in the score.

This was when the Ukrainian team’s psychological advantage manifested itself; the Ukrainian players had no right to lose their first European qualifying match. When the Olympic scoreboard showed 1:2, open soccer began to dominate the field, when teams forget about tactics and play with their hearts and heads, not their feet. The two head shots scored by Rotan and Rusol after penalty and corner kick passes were more the result of a desperate desire to win than the Ukrainian national team’s playing superiority. The Georgians did not reconcile themselves to their defeat and were on the verge of evening the score at least three times.

After the game, the Georgian team’s coach said that his team was too tired to score a third goal. The Ukrainian national team’s coach said nothing. After the game, Blokhin looked as though he himself had played two periods in the field and won a victory in the match, when anything could have happened.

Needless to say, the Ukrainian team’s mistakes during its match with the Georgian team will be carefully analyzed. But even now it is possible to say that our national team has acquired character and the will to win, in addition to its players’ skills, and tactical and physical training. This seems to be the main result of our national team’s first appearance in Europe’s new championship. Our team has finally become confident of its own potential and convinced that it can win matches in any circumstances. And this is no less an indicator of a team’s class; sometimes it is as important as the individual skill of players selected for a team.

Ukraine’s match with Georgia should not be forgotten. On the contrary, we must continue to maintain the victorious mood and, of course, the quality of the play. We have another 11 qualifying games ahead of us, and none of them will be any easier than the first. This means not only the upcoming matches against the world’s leading Italian and French finalists. Besides the games against the Scottish and Lithuanian teams, and a return match with Georgia, the modest national team from the Faroe Islands, which lost its first two games (0:6), will require our team to exert every effort to get the better of them. Our players will have to demonstrate not only skill but character, which was evidenced by Ukraine’s team in the first but difficult match for the European Cup.