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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

Slovenia rolls Ukraine 2 to 1

16 November, 1999 - 00:00

Our boys don’t know how to play with weaklings. This is true of both Kyiv Dynamo and its weaker version, the Ukrainian National. Their sufferings when meeting with the Armenians, Albanians, and the annual games with the Danes and various other soccer minorities are not caused by ups and downs in the Ukrainian team’s preparedness, much as some try to convince us. Representatives of contemporary Ukrainian soccer find it much easier not to let the stronger ones play than beat weaker ones.

The option our boys chose for the match with Slovenia, with six players in defense, was supposed to secure a minimum program, not being on the losing side. And who was there to lose to? The names on the Slovenian team will mean something perhaps to world- reputed soccer moguls. There was only one player on the host team, Zachovic, who once played at a truly high level.

At the beginning everything seemed normal — that is if one considered the inability of a Ukrainian halfback to keep the ball center field for even half a minute normal. Kandaurov, a last-minute National recruit, simply had no one to pass the ball to. Kharkiv’s “Portuguese” did his job anyway, assisting Shevchenko’s final shot with a truly Brazilian pass. But that was a stroke of luck, not a regular attainment. Without doubt, Andriy Shevchenko is a superstar, but his play is watched by all of Europe every Saturday. Even Slovenian backyard fullbacks knew where he would run and when. In Milan, he willingly “shares” the ball with his partners and this is what makes him one of the very best. On the National team, however, the newly made superman obviously tugged the blanket on himself, depleting the team’s potential, small as it was.

After the Ukrainians led the game the outcome seemed obvious. A solid wall of defense and all it took was to overtake the nervous host team in counteroffensive. For some reason the Ukrainians became jumpy. Joseph Szabo, reverently adhering to Ukraine’s number one coach Lobanovsky’s guidelines, placed Moscow Spartak’s Dmitri Parfionov’s on the right flank of defense. The Spartak player’s return would look logical, except that he had never studied in the Dynamo school and thus could not help but fall out of the play pattern which seemed understandable even to Dmytrulin. While the mistakes made by rookie Kandaurov posed no threat to the Ukrainian goalie, the right defense flank finally became that path through which the ball, sent by Slovenian halfback Rudonju, would invariably find its way to Shovkovsky’s penalty area, and things got almost back to normal there only after the fullback was expelled from the field for rude conduct, replaced by Dmytrulin.

The Ukrainians were hit the first time because there were too many players in defense, getting into each other’s way, failing to prevent Zachovic’s second successful try at Shovkovsky’s goal (the first was defeated by the goalie and the goal frame), tying the score. This could have been all the host team would hope to achieve, had the Ukrainians managed to keep the ball under control. The tiring Slovenians were hopelessly falling behind the untiring Kosovsky, fresh Kardash, and Rebrov appearing in the second half of the game, and of course Shevchenko. Yet every Ukrainian counteroffensive looked chaotic and worried the almost two meter Slovenian goalie very little if at all, except perhaps Shevchenko’s thrust, perhaps the only one in the second half. The Ukrainians kept the score even the way Pinocchio did his five gold coins, so the Slovenian winning hit did not look unexpected. Achimovic aimed a long range shot Shovkovsky’s goal, empty for the moment, with such skill that one wanted to congratulate him rather than curse the Ukrainian goalie. The umpire’s performance requires no comment and Husin’s expulsion is explained by the fact that he played the way he had always done at home where no punishment is meted out for such rudeness.

What happened in Ljubljana threatens Ukraine’s access to the European finals, something that has seemed finally decided. All it takes now is one winning goal in Kyiv, beating a European national which is not first, not even twenty-first. And we would be happy to be lucky, the way we were playing Russia, or a “hundred percent” 11-meter penalty shot, as in the game with Iceland. Yet Shovkovsky’s sad example hints at our luck running thin at the worst possible times. Hence, we would like to watch a really good performance in Kyiv tomorrow, beating Slovenia, thus worthily ending a two-year cycle in the life of Ukraine’s number one soccer team. The Ukrainians may not be as strong as Brazilians, but objectively they are surely stronger than the Slovenians.

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