Manchester United 1, Dynamo Kyiv 0

At first glance, the way Dynamo played made a good impression. Our side handled the ball without undue haste or fuss. Yet, they failed to break through the defense. They could only do so by means of quick one-touch passes. This kind of play is fraught with possible mistakes. Thus the Kyivans faced an alternative: to play menacingly and run the risk of errors or to play foolproof without threatening the rival’s goal. They opted for the latter, which, however, does not insure one from making mistakes. After intercepting the ball on his side’s half of the pitch, English center forward Sheringham (an all-purpose player) made an accurate forty meter pass to the unprotected Cole on the left flank. Cole seemed to have played awkwardly, and four of our players came rushing, swooping on Higgs, while Shovkovsky repelled Kean’s 10-meter shot, but Sheringham managed to take his usual place and pushed the ball home.

The hosts displayed high class, if slow, play. When Manchester began to play a one-touch game, my heart was full of two mixed feelings: the desire for our players to steal the ball as soon as possible, and the no less strong desire to see the English masters’ combination to the end. There were the famous shots of Beckham, beaten off by reliable Shovkovsky, the feints of Cole, and the breakthroughs of Kean, i.e., all that we regularly see on television instead the championship of Ukraine. Still, we have to give the Kyivans credit: they did not get much in the way of the hosts showing their high class, the more so that the English champion was also playing gingerly, worrying about the final result.

There must be some supreme wisdom in that Dynamo chose to play in Manchester for a draw or a minimal defeat. A minimal defeat is perhaps better than the rout which could have occurred if Dynamo had rushed into an attack with the forwards they had. In all probability, Valery Lobanovsky will still have to hold more than one press conference to explain to us incompetents that the tactic Dynamo displayed in Manchester was indispensable in the league tournament’s final round. And while there are no explanations of this kind, we will have to admit that Ukraine’s champion has lost four out of six matches in the league tournament, scoring fewer points than all the other 32 participants in this stage of competition (and, incidentally, of all the Ukrainian clubs, Dynamo has failed for the first time in past few years to rack up the largest number of points in the UEFA rating table).