The Four Ukrainian Teams Still Fighting for Eurocups

It is for the first time in the history of independent soccer that we begin a playing season as a normal, in terms of soccer, state. It took our soccer nine years to break out of the drab crowd of Finns, Estonians, Cypriots, or even Welshmen, where our Russian legal successors had pushed us in 1991 with the silent consent of our sports leadership. Only a new generation of soccer players, who replaced the “lost generation” of the early and mid- nineties, were destined to restore justice and grant Ukraine its rightful place as a soccer power. It is too early for us to speak about full-fledged rivalry with the European “big five” whose clubs each year draw like a vacuum cleaner the best players of other countries, but it is quite obvious that the level of the Portuguese, Dutch, Turks, and Greeks is no problem for our squads. Two clubs in the League of Champions main tournament and as many in the UEFA Cup network is not just a sports result. This means our country has reached a fitting level of soccer representation, which can put the rusty mechanism of our soccer system into motion.

Everything could have been different. The participation of two Ukrainian teams in the Champions League was under strong doubt until the very last minutes of the elimination matches. However, we should not explain everything by luck alone, although this time it was only fair for us to be lucky. Prague’s Slavia should not have relied on the only accidental goal it had scored in Donetsk or underrated the Shakhtar forwards who, in spite playing somewhat clumsily, know how to do things other than taking “pot shots” or training their rival’s goalie. Nor should the Yugoslav champion have prematurely celebrated victory over Dynamo, knowing that our champion has been robbed of its adroit forwards. It is not only the Kyiv forwards who know how to score goals: also able to so are some other players hitherto kept aside as humble bench warmers for Shevchenko and Rebrov. They began to score the required goals both in the championship of Europe and “in Europe.” Both our delegates to the Champions League, as well as Vorskla, currently in the top division’s last place, were in fact stronger than their rivals in August, and they showed a certain high class of play. Remember how we sneered at Karpaty last year, when they failed to beat the modest Swedish Helsingborg! But then the Swedes passed through the Inter Milan in spite of the latter’s millions. Now we have a normal soccer September, during which we will see ten (!) European tournament matches, in which our teams will take on the top European clubs’ elite, not the Estonians or Macedonians. And it will be far more interesting to watch this soccer rather than that of any English Premier League match. But we do face some problems here.

TWO CAPITALS

On the one hand, the possibility to choose the team to cheer for — Dynamo vs. the Dutch PSV or for Shakhtar vs. the champion of Italy — is not only a pleasant thing, because it warms cockles of the hearts of the soccer-minded Ukrainians, but also a significant event. The necessity and possibility of such a choice seems to have left in the past the hitherto customary formula: one country one club. While only a year and a half ago the whole Ukrainian soccer elite could easily gather in the Olympic Stadium’s locker room, now Ukrainian soccer stars are scattered over not only the rich foreign lands but also in the steppes of Ukraine. Just one of these days Ukraine will field a truly national team, not a disguised Dynamo Kyiv, to play versus Poland, which is also the sign of a normal soccer state. That Arsenal and Lazio will go Donetsk, not Kyiv, to win back the Champions Cup inspires in us a hope for a renewed rivalry over the national championship. A domestic game between Shakhtar and Dynamo will look entirely different after the two teams have warmed up with such rivals as Manchester United and Arsenal. Perhaps after this the Ukrainian fans will stop unnaturally supporting Milan, which they have been persuaded to do by some untraditional soccer journalists for the past two years.

As early as September 12, the soccer capital of Ukraine will move for a few hours to Donetsk, where Shakhtar will host the star-studded Lazio. After a few more movements of this kind we will regain another soccer value we lost in 1991, a true rivalry in the country. Dynamo will no longer be an “ex-officio” champion, it will instead be fighting for this title in earnest. Then even a third soccer capital could arise. It is not so important who this will be — Lviv or Dnipropetrovsk, or Poltava and Kryvy Rih — our current representatives in the UEFA Cup. Let us recall that in Soviet times we used to root for Minsk and Tbilisi playing in Eurotournaments, and even Moscow Spartak irritated us not so much when it played international matches. At the same time, all our unfathomable former homeland would root for Kyiv Dynamo of the 1970s-80s. Everything is returning to its proper place after nine years of manmade injustice.

MOSCOW FOR US

Russian television channels broadcast our teams’ matches in the Champions League elimination tournament in an entirely different way compared to a year or two ago. Where has the arrogance and the thinly disguised irony gone? Moscow commentators were openly supporting the Ukrainian teams, showing excellent knowledge of the state of our soccer they had been referring to as second-rated for so many years. And the point was not only in the fact that the names of Shakhtar and Dynamo players were pronounced without mistakes and even more correctly than by our commentators. For instance, Shatskykh, the Belarusian surname of the Uzbek citizen playing for Dynamo, should be pronounced with the stress on the last syllable, which offsets the temptation to inflect this noun in the Russian or Ukrainian languages. Disappointed with their own teams’ performance, our Russian colleagues were really pleased with successful play of the Ukrainians. While our neighbors are “Africanizing” their clubs and the national team, the Ukrainian squads, even without top stars now playing in the West, looked much better than our Slavic brethren from Yugoslavia, the Czech Republic, and Macedonia, let alone the Estonians who happened to be standing on the way of our “coal miners” (Shakhtar — Ed.). Who knows, maybe, all Eastern Europe will soon be cheering for Ukrainian clubs, pinning on them the last hope in the rivalry with the Western superclubs.

WINNING IS NOT THE MAIN THING

Our teams have so far won nothing and are unlikely to win in the Cup of Champions, whatever some coaches say about “maximum tasks.” There will only be one victor plus the winner of the UEFA Cup tournament which is gradually turning into kind of Europe’s second league. Today, thirty two teams are ready to kick-start the Champions’ League games. The UEFA Cup involves even more participants, even ones nobody ever heard of. All these teams take part in the great festival which European tournaments are. For the first time Ukraine takes part in the opening of this festival as a body. We are a full-fledged part of Europe, at least as regards soccer. And nobody can be ensured from defeats in soccer. Let us hope that the defeats which our teams will sooner or later suffer will happen as late as possible and will be a result of a hard fight. And when it happens, when our teams start to leave the Eurocups, we will not let them down, we will go and watch them play in our stadiums in Ukrainian championship and Ukrainian Cup games. That is what European soccer fans do, and that will sooner or later happen here. The start for it has already been given. And the Ukrainians still can win the Champions Cup this spring. If not Atelkin and Popov, Vashchuk and Holovko, then maybe Luzhny or Shevchenko will drink champaigne from that vessel next May. Meanwhile, let us greet the soccer September, which will be interesting as never before.