Recently, both representatives of Ukraine in Europe’s major club tournament, the Champions League, successfully overcame the qualification hurdle and will now play in the main tournament whose group stage will continue from September to December. The League’s level is so high that I want to forget the qualification round games — the sooner the better — by plunging into the atmosphere of first-class soccer. Will our teams play on a high level or lag behind, like last year? Contemplation of this question requires focusing on the qualification matches that just finished.
Let’s start with Ukraine’s Championship leader, Kyiv Dynamo. The rival of the Kyiv team was not the strongest. Taking into account the level of the teams’ players, the Dynamo players should have easily beaten Sarajevo. The final results were 1:0 and 3:0. In fact, the duel with the diligent Serbian team, which was geared up for a battle, was nerve-wracking and far from simple.
Dynamo began the first game in Sarajevo by letting the ball into its own net, which was not accepted by the referee because the rivals had broken the rules. If not for that violation, nobody knows how the game would have ended. The same thing nearly happened in Kyiv, when the ball went several centimeters farther than Shovkovsky’s net crossbar. A few minutes later, thanks to the team’s Guinea-born greenhorn, Ismael Bangura, the Kyiv players scored a quick goal, like in the first game.
Again, like two weeks ago, instead of scoring a few more goals and calmly leading the game to a victory, Ukraine’s Championship leader did not manage to score a second goal during 75 minutes of game time, and the stadium was tense until the Bosnians kicked a goal into their own net.
Objectively, Sarajevo is not a team against which Kyiv Dynamo can show its true level. The large number of mistakes by the Ukrainian team players is alarming. Or maybe that’s not such a big worry. Perhaps these mistakes were only proof of slackness in playing with an obviously weaker rival. Unfortunately, we will find out in three weeks’ time, when the Championship League group tournament starts.
Unlike Kyiv Dynamo, Donetsk Shakhtar was forced to show its character and will to victory already in the qualification game. Salzburg, the Austrian team against which the Donetsk team was pitted, is stronger than the Bosnian champion that played against Kyiv Dynamo. But it was not so strong that a team of Shakhtar’s class and ambitions could not have easily beaten it. Like Dynamo, the Shakhtar players should have scored a crucial number of goals already in the first match and prove its superiority.
In fact, the Donetsk players lost the first game and won a victory during the last minutes of the second one, but not without the arbiter’s help, who announced an 11-m penalty shot into Salzburg’s net. It is good that Shakhtar proved its will to victory. But they could have done without it simply by not making mistakes on defense and using their attacking opportunities effectively.
I repeat: the games that took place on Aug. 29 must be forgotten immediately because a tournament of a much higher class awaits our champion and vice-champion. In the real Champions League games are played at different speeds and mistakes are not forgiven, as it happens in qualification games. So far, Dynamo and Shakhtar have gotten closer to the traditional leaders of the Champions League only in terms of expenses for the teams’ maintenance. If you total the amount of money that has been spent, not the points gained in the tournament, Dynamo would have already entered the eight-group and Shakhtar, at least the quarter-finals. Our soccer clubs have already learned to spend money in a European manner. But the teams’ playing class is still lagging.
It will be very interesting to see what our soccer leaders, strengthened by the players with million-dollar contracts, will look like in the fall part of the season. Will they be able to play equally successfully both in the Champions League and Ukraine’s Championship? Will the few Ukrainian players in Dynamo and Shakhtar help Ukraine’s national team reach its goals?
Everything mentioned above promises us a full-fledged soccer fall filled with first-class sports events. We have entered this fall thanks to Dynamo and Shakhtar’s victories.
