Anderlecht 4, Dynamo 2

Earlier, Kyiv Dynamo had also lost to Brussels Anderlecht with a score 2 to 4. This happened in those relatively recent times when the hryvnia had not yet been introduced, the energy market was not a point of dispute, and we all were expecting reforms to produce results.

I don’t know about society, but soccer has remained unchanged since then, except that Leonenko has vanished from Dynamo and Valery Lobanovsky has taken over as coach. As before, we still do not have a full-fledged national championship in contrast to, say, Belgium, where crammed stadiums watch the intriguing and unpredictable matches from September to May. And again, the champion of a country of vast steppes, main pipelines, and empty stadiums has met with the champion of a country with no steppes and with pipelines no one cares anything about. Last time we expected Dynamo, having lost 2 to 4, would then score two goals in Kyiv and continue its progress through the tournament. In reality, our side lost the home game 0 to 3 instead of winning it. What shall we pin our hopes on now?

We are now on the downside of October, the time Dynamo’s leading players were supposed to reach their peak form after a very lackluster performance in July- September. It is now that the well- trained Dynamo players should be marching triumphantly across Europe’s soccer fields. In reality, our champion was beaten by a far from strongest continental club, which our “experts,” almost confident of the Kyiv squad winning the three victorious points, had already listed as an underachiever. But it is only in our national championship that one can list something in advance. In Brussels, on the contrary, nobody was going to surrender to Dynamo’s mercy.

The Day aptly wrote three weeks ago that Dynamo had only shown a really victorious spirit in the first half, when it scored four times against Anderlecht. The idea that 45 minutes of good performance a month is insufficient for a good team remained unexpressed then, for we still believed in a wise strategy. Under this strategy, we all expected Dynamo to repel in Brussels all attacks in the first half and to outrun the tired hosts in the second one. In reality, what we saw was the mirror reflection of the last minutes of the Kyiv match, the only difference being that this happened at the end of the first half and the three goals were scored against, not for, our side. Could it have been otherwise? This thought came over me because of one more coincidence: both in Kyiv and Brussels, with the score still being a draw, the ball would hit the crossbar. Both times, the shots were made by the visitors and both times this failure led to an overall defeat. Would the course of the game have changed if Husin had struck home when the score was 1:1? It might have, but let us remember the statistics which say that, before scoring three goals in seven minutes, the Belgians took six inaccurate shots on Shovkovsky’s goal. The shots were made from comfortable positions easily taken by the attacking host players. Or did quantity simply turn into quality? The more so that all three goals were scored by Anderlecht from a 5-7-meter distance. You just can’t miss such a chance of scoring!

Statistics can not only help but also mislead. Officially, Dynamo possessed the ball longer than Anderlecht did. But in practice, our side just fumbled with the ball longer, enabling the Belgians to build up their defenses. Conversely, the hosts, instead of holding back the ball, would roll it over the pitch, like a billiard ball, and take precise and accurate shots. Where were our halfbacks — all five of them — at the time? In all probability, they were supposed to help the helpless Demetradze do something in the attack. They may have forgotten they are precisely halfbacks, not half-forwards. As a result, nobody prevented the Anderlecht players from assessing the mid-field situation and launching interesting combinations with accurate flank passes. Or maybe our players just did not want to spoil the beauty of the game?

Clearly, this was not so. For some unknown reason, Anderlecht’s not exactly jet quick players outran ours, although it was supposed to be the other way round. Even the sturdy two meter tall Koller managed to reach the ball before our boys could, which seemed physically impossible. No doubt, the point is not that the Belgians suddenly had wings grown on their backs but that the Ukrainians came unstuck exactly as they did in the September match versus Eindhoven. A few unhappy minutes at the end of the second half would not have become decisive had Dynamo launched a massive attack in the second half in order to turn the score around. This is in fact what everybody expected them to do. Instead, our side continued to play in the same way, but more cautiously. They seemed to have been told during the interval that all they had to do was not to concede a goal and only to score if a happy chance arose. This kind of practicality has the right to exist, as does a tournament strategy. But what about the tormented viewers glued to their televisions late into the night, who expected to see the attacking Dynamo we had been promised several months before? Even a surprisingly successful commentator, Dmytro Dzhulaya, failed to diminish the bitterness of what he saw.

Perhaps Dynamo will painfully worm its way to the League’s second leg or the UEFA Cup like last year. There is a certain chance for this. But when, at last, shall we see the soccer for which people go to stadiums under any weather, the soccer we only saw during those memorable 45 minutes of the September game versus Anderlecht? The coach explains the team was “unbalanced” by its players defending the national team’s colors. But all our Champions League rivals had the same chances to “get unbalanced,” for almost all their lads also play for their national teams. Moreover, neither Anderlecht, nor PSV, nor Manchester United had their national championship fixtures canceled on the eve of the league tournament. So what exactly tuckered out the Dynamo players so much? Please, don’t tell us the stuff like “functional peaks.” A soccer player either has a fiery look in his eyes or not. He either fights for the ball all the time or just simulates such a battle. Which of these options did Dynamo demonstrate in Brussels?

Let us not calculate chances and points. Let us simply wish that our champions show in the two remaining league group matches good and high quality soccer, the soccer they undoubtedly can play. Only then will there be results. For what comes first is play, not results, whatever our soccer strategists might say.