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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

POLITICAL FOOTBALL

12 October, 1999 - 00:00

Soccer has been elevated in Ukraine to the rank of the current President's election campaign. His name sounds so often during televised sports events that you gain an impression that he is one of the top players in the match. But, no matter how often you say “Kuchma,” this will not add up to victory. Judging by the present-day performance of Ukrainian teams in European competition, the situation is just the opposite: the four teams only won two points in the preseason games. Ukrainian soccer — it is now obvious — has fallen hostage to politics, primitive Soviet style politics at that. Can there be a strong national championship in Ukraine or, moreover, can soccer develop on a mass scale if, for instance, the chairman of the Soccer Federation is simultaneously the Prime Minister, Civil Defense chief, and leader of the pro-President Zlahoda sociopolitical association; if the professional soccer league is headed by the honorary president (by the way, some say he is simply president) of the Dynamo Soccer Club, People's Deputy, one of the leaders of the pro-President SDPU(o) Hryhory Surkis? Of course, using his high position, Valery Pustovoitenko can grant privileges to soccer clubs or throw them a penny or two, but would it not be better if our soccer were taken care of by a manager free of other duties?

Today The Day begins a discussion on the subject “Soccer and Politics. What is Needed for Ukrainian Soccer to Become a European Leader?”

IT WAS ALWAYS THIS WAY

Back in the times of Joseph Stalin politicians understood that soccer could be used for propaganda purposes. Suffice it to recall the notorious match USSR vs. Yugoslavia at the 1952 Olympic Games. This is why the mass soccer craze among a sizable part of the global population has been exploited to political ends for over half a century. And there is nothing bad in this. Who will dare reproach Jacques Chirac for openly urging on France's team in last year's World Cup finals?

The special feature of political soccer is that it is always extremely patriotic. The trouble is that the patriotism of the ruling circles and that of the millions of soccer enthusiasts do not always coincide. Remember the recent past, when the socialist camp teams were most eager to beat the USSR national team. That was the only allowed way to prove the true depth of our “brotherhood.” Likewise, the soccer players of Kyiv, Tbilisi, Yerevan and Vilnius would offer last-ditch resistance precisely in matches against Moscow teams. Against the backdrop of the pitched battles between Kyiv Dynamo and Moscow Spartak, games between the Kyivans and the Tbilisi players looked in the eyes of fans almost like a friendly warm-up. The authorities knew this only too well, but they allowed a fair share of soccer nationalism. The point is that healthy competition gave birth to really big masters of soccer, who could later prove the advantages of the socialist system over the capitalist one on the international scene.

Soccer players were always more popular than politicians. Hence there was a strong temptation harness the popularity of the former to serve the interests of the latter. Among the comparatively good examples of the combination of soccer and politics is parliamentary membership of Bernard Tapis, owner of Olimpique of Marseilles, and of Silvio Berlusconi, owner of the Milan club. The fact that the former finally ended up in pretrial detention and the latter had to resign as prime minister on corruption charges does not stop the legions of those wishing to garner a political harvest from the soccer field.

CURRENT HISTORY

Let us get back to our home city of Kyiv, where the first attempt to involve soccer in the process of democratization was the nomination of Valery Lobanovsky as a People's Deputy in the first (relatively) democratically convened Verkhovna Rada. In those times, about 35,000 would regularly come to see Dynamo, but it turned out that having only a famous soccer name was not enough for success in politics. The defeat our best soccer coach suffered in the election brought about a situation when soccer people were left alone for some time. Let us not take seriously the ambitions of the presidents of provincial soccer clubs, who were continuously yearning for legislative seats. These are mere trifles compared to what has started in the last few years.

As a result of our well-known “prosperity,” the roots of big-time soccer have dried up almost completely. Provincial sports schools, barely keeping their heads above water, have stopped regularly supplying talent to this country's best teams, which has impacted on the overall standards of Ukrainian soccer. The single magnificent palace named Kyiv Dynamo, erected on the ruins of a once multi-tiered soccer pyramid, as well as later attempts to do the same in some other cities, resemble, at closer examination, the hastily- built mansions of modern nouveaux riches , which stand on sand and look good for only the first year or two, despite imported building materials. General euphoria over the few international matches Dynamo had won was put down last year by a crushing defeat at the hands of Juventus right on the eve of a parliamentary election in which SDPU(o) just scraped by the 4% barrier. Another “team,” the Agrarian Party, which Lviv's Karpaty players had promptly joined before that election, has almost vanished from the political scene. One tries not to recall now a similar admission that all of Kyiv Dynamo belongs to the SDPU(o). Yet, it would be interesting to know what party Shevchenko belongs to and whether he pays party dues from his Milan salary. Nor is it known about the party affiliation of another soccer player, former Lviv resident and now Kyivan Yezersky. Is he still in APU, or has he defected to the united Social Democrats? Has he founded a party cell at the Koncha-Zaspa training base, does he ask Lobanovsky for permission to attend party meetings? What about the party membership of Dynamo's foreign players from Belarus, Georgia, Russia, and Uzbekistan? Of course, this is a joke, as is Oleh Blokhin's membership in Hromada.

LESSONS UNLEARNED

Do you think the numerous pratfalls with “political” soccer have taught someone something? I do not know if Leonid Kuchma asked to say something good about himself during Lviv Karpaty's latest UEFA Cup game. The Lviv team's defeat at the hands of an obscure Swedish club at the Lviv stadium, just inaugurated by the head of state after renovation, has hardly added up to the popularity of the “No. 1 candidate.” After our people were served this televised sweetmeat on UT-1, a good proprietor would have immediately reduced such waiters to dishwashers. However, on the other hand, the shameful level of the Lviv players' game corresponded exactly to the achievement level of the “course of reforms.” But even the resounding failure of Ukrainian soccer clubs on the European arena has not yet stopped the wound-up propaganda mechanism of the soccer-related political image-makers. Having failed to support “the single candidate” by playing well, the leaders of our soccer teams backed up his candidature unanimously at a Professional Soccer League session, as if forgetting that victories in international (!) sports competitions, as well in elections, can only be achieved in an open and fair struggle, and not at meetings. Closing their eyes to the school- yard level of national competitions, soccer canvassers have put on the old record singing about Dynamo being the last joy of the Ukrainian people. There seems to be no one to ask why we have had only this joy for so many years on end.

There also is the national team of Ukraine, which played “historic match” with Russia on October 9. Our soccer players themselves made this match historic, having lost a real opportunity to win well in advance the right to participate in Euro-2000. Will the 1:1 tie provide anybody much political capital and how will they try to use it?

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