Game Found, Points Lost
Beaten by Liverpool at home, Dynamo Kyiv retains a purely theoretical chance to continue playing in the Champions League and European cups in general. There are still some options left, but it will be next to impossible to take advantage of them.
This was the third consecutive defeat of Dynamo in the Champions League and the first that left no impression of pessimism and hopelessness. The last time our champions looked like this was last June, when the Kyivans won the Ukrainian championship gold medals in the final minutes of the match versus Dnipro, owing to a tremendous surge of willpower. What makes the games against Dnipro and Liverpool look alike is not the number of the so-called critical moments but the spirit with which our players fought for victory. I mean precisely victory, not the “positive result,” as some coaches say, trying to justify another trouncing of their team.
An audience of 50,000 at the stadium and millions of television viewers saw that Dynamo Kyiv knew how to attack, Cernat and Ghioane showed good technique, Belkevych and Khatskevych kept the pitch under watch, Melashchenko was braced for the decisive shot, Nesmachny and Bodnar were mobile, and Holovko was a reliable forward-marker. The dynamism of Dynamo (pardon the pun) gave them a complete territorial advantage — never translated into goals in the first half. The hosts made much of “too accurate” shots right into the visitors’ goalie Dudek who had showed, playing for Poland, that it was not easy to hit the ball past him.
By the unwritten laws of soccer, the ball which missed the rival goal box hit ours. It was unexpected for Dynamo fullbacks when Murphy availed of Gerrard’s cross pass in the 43rd minute to open the score. This illogical goal only spurred up the Ukrainian players to launch new deadly attacks in the next twenty minutes. This ended with an equalizer Ghioane shot after a left-flank pass. Then our side was again unlucky: after not so hard a kick by Gerrard, the ball touched one of the Kyiv fullbacks and deflected past the helpless Reva into the net, bringing the score to 1 to 2.
Then again there were attacks, critical situations, and even an off-side goal. But there were no new goals for Dynamo. Despite the unsatisfactory result, the Kyivans’ performance created a good impression. The audience was of the same opinion, applauding to their favorites as they were leaving the pitch.
What then kept our leading club from playing in the two previous failed matches the way they did against Liverpool? Perhaps the opponents are to blame. Coming to the capital of Ukraine without coach Houllier, who has undergone heart surgery, and a number of injured players, including their jet Owen, the English squad deliberately played defensively, allowing our side to handle the ball in the pitch center. We saw a true Liverpool or, to be more exact, what it is capable of, only after our side equalized the score. The visitors immediately captured the pitch center, barring the Kyivans from building on their success. The unexpected revival of Liverpool havoc in our defensive line, and the annoying rebound into our goal was not so much an accident as the result of the changed tactic in the English squad. The experienced visitors made as much effort as necessary to achieve a success. Liverpool then went back to England to play the next Premier League match, leaving our Dynamo to challenge the Obolon Brewery team in the Ukraine Cup quarterfinals.
It is true that most Dynamo players lack experience. But Liverpool, too, displays a very young Steven Gerrard in the foreground. Yet, the latter goes out on the pitch together with Harry McAlistair, almost twice his senior. Dynamo, on its part, has no over-30 players. So it is not through its own will that Dynamo has become “inexperienced.” Moreover, it runs the risk of always remaining such unless the coaches modify their recruitment policy somewhat.
But this is a different story we will discuss in the near future. And, to cheer ourselves up after the Dynamo failure, let us recall an interesting story. In 1997 and 1999, when the champions of Ukraine were successfully going through the Champions League group tournament, the national team of Ukraine kept losing the world and European final fixtures. Could it be perhaps the other way round this year?
