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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

Kyiv Dynamo Loses Champions’ League Prelim to Prague Sparta

13 November, 2012 - 00:00

Why the defeat? Maybe the Kyiv team had not got in shape yet or we should look for a reason in psychology – the team failed to bring itself together in a hard situation.

When Myroslav Baranek scored a stupid goal at the very beginning of the game because of defense and the goalie’s mistake, I thought it was just an unexpected complication. There was more than enough time to change everything.

But in the first half the host team apparently failed to recover from the shock. Anyway, they did not play any constructive game for their fans who filled the comfortable Dynamo stadium. Dynamo coach Oleksiy Mykhailychenko summed up after the game: “The first half was a total failure.” In the second half the game changed for the better. Dynamo totally controlled the situation, with the assistance of Russian legionnaire Oleksiy Kherasimenko, their game became more powerful.

But unfortunately for some reason the referee kicked Oleksandr Khatskevych out of the game, giving the Czech team a power play. Khatskevych let his team down, and even though the number of players evened up by the end of the game, Dynamo failed to score the return goal. The 0:1 defeat is the most unpleasant surprise of the Champions League prelims. They lost the main battle of the summer. In this view the unsuccessful home games of Dynamo against Karpaty (0:0) and Dnipro (2:3) do not look like accidents. Last year Dynamo lost a home game to Brondby at the same stage (0:1), but they convincingly won the road game by scoring four goals against two. So they did not care much for defeat.

Still, we have only lost the first game, not the battle. Dynamo still has a chance to take revenge in Prague on August 26. The mission is difficult but possible. Just think back to the road victories over Barcelona (4:0) and Eindhoven (4:2). But can Dynamo play the way they did last year?

Photo by Volodymyr Rasner,The Day:

Fall, the grass is soft

 

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