So Vorobei Does Not Feel Hurt
Andriy Shevchenko has been pronounced Ukraine’s best soccer player of 2000. At first glance, this decision is correct beyond a shadow of a doubt. For, indeed, Shevchenko was named one of the best players by the most prestigious soccer publications and federations. But what has this got to do with Ukraine?
I do not mean that Shevchenko is not Ukrainian. He is a true Ukrainian, although he feels more ashamed to speak his mother tongue than to run half-naked across Italian stadiums. But this is precisely the point: the stadiums our super soccer player plays on are in any case foreign, Italian to be exact. Conversely, our soccer hope only played once on his native soil in 2000 for the national team against Poland. Of course, if we had switched over completely to watching the Italian, not the Ukrainian, championship, Shevchenko is really Ukraine’s best soccer player there. From Ukraine, to be more exact. The best and the only one!
Later everything will remain the same: our most talented athletes will be playing abroad, leaving a place in their clubs for little-known Romanians and Africans. The latter will in turn challenge — and rightly so — the title of Ukraine’s best. Europe has decided at last to identify the best by the place the athlete plays in, not by his place of birth. This is why the Brazilians Ronaldo and Rivaldo or the Liberian Bea could become the best on the continent. With this in view, we should also clear up the rules by which we salute Ukraine’s best soccer players of the year. It is so far not quite clear what is the criterion for selection: that the player is Ukrainian or that he plays in the Ukrainian championship. Why? Because we seem to have become unstuck: our three-time MVP Leonenko is in fact not quite Ukrainian because he came over Russia in the early nineties and could still be carrying a Russian passport. This means we first confer the best-player title on an objectively foreign player and now on one who is no longer ours, because, under the rules we established ourselves, Shevchenko should be contending for the best player of Italy.
To avoid further misunderstandings, we should clearly state right now that we identify the best Ukrainian soccer player out of ethnic Ukrainians or the best player of Ukraine out of those playing in Ukraine. Today, we are utterly confusing the two notions, which leads to not terribly nice results. For example, Ukraine’s soccer sky was brightly lit throughout 2000 by the star of Shakhtar Donetsk forward Andriy Vorobei. None of the forwards playing in our domestic competitions could match Andriy. On the international arena as well Vorobei showed himself at his best both on the national team and his native Shakhtar. Unfortunately, the best striker of the Ukrainian championship, who undoubtedly deserved to be proclaimed the best precisely in 2000, found himself behind our well- known stars who had already left Ukraine. This would not have happened if we knew for sure how to identify those worthy of the soccer player of the year title.
I would not like at all to see in this misunderstanding any signs of rivalry between Kyiv and Donetsk. But the very fact that there is no question of the immediate transfer of Andriy Vorobei to Kyiv Dynamo, as would have been the case a few years ago, shows again that there are two poles, two centers, in our soccer which will be seriously vying for leadership. Of course, Kyiv and Donetsk are not yet Madrid and Barcelona, but a good healthy trend is already visible. Taking into account that the time has passed when our soccer leader was identified in good time, all our soccer-related ideas, including identification of this country’s best player, should be brought into line with this. Kyivans are embittered that there are no such bright personalities as Shevchenko and Rebrov among current Dynamo players, both Ukrainian and foreign. This seems to be the true cause of the best-player mix-up: it must be a Dynamo player, even though a former one!
I would like to believe that the current successful season is only the first step in the future career of Andriy Vorobei, a talented forward for the Ukrainian national team. Awards, prizes, and all that are sure to find their hero as Europe’s Golden Ball finally found the Portuguese Luis Figo. It will be recalled that your correspondent forecast this honor for the Portuguese back in late August in the article, “A Word on Figo.” It could be stated as firmly in November that Andriy Vorobei was Ukraine’s best player in 2000. That he was not awarded the prize is no crime. Shakhtar managers are not misers, so they should generously compensate their forward for a certain moral discomfort.
As to the titles and those who confer them, it is high time we solved the problem. There are a host of sports and soccer periodicals along with television programs in Ukraine. Which of them is the most popular and authoritative? The patriotic but somewhat simple- minded newspaper, Ukrayinsky futbol? The sometimes witty but at the same time overtly Ukrainophobic weekly, Futbol? The Dynamo Forever newspaper, Komanda, or the former flagship of the sports press, Sportyvna hazeta? Or maybe the best should be selected by a widely popular televised soccer program? Or maybe all this should be put into the hands of the Soccer Federation or the Professional Soccer League? One should decide so that the title of the best goes to the best indeed, so that there is no confusion about who to choose from, and so that Vorobei does not feel hurt.
