This event might have happened ten years back when in the fall of 1995 the Ukrainian national team was ending its first official tour, vying in the 1995 European qualifiers. At the time, however, other teams ended up in the finals. The same had happened in 1995 and would happen in 1997, 1999, 2001, and 2001. The Ukrainian team would find the door to the European and world championships closed, either at the last moment or being told not to try to step through it in advance. The situation would change, however. Soccer factors are the sole reasons for the Ukrainian national team succeeding in taking its proper place among the soccer elite only ten years afterward, namely the number of goals scored. However, one could take a broader look at the problem and see that the reason for the Ukrainian national team’s success is Oleh Blokhin’s able guidance.
HE KNEW WHY, BUT WOULDN’T TELL
For a number of years the Ukrainian national has been regarded as “Shevchenko’s team.” It isn’t necessary to list Andriy Shevchenko’s kudos, considering that the man ranks with the world’s top soccer players. Yet this did not suffice for success. The Ukrainian national team reached their higher level only after being transformed from Shevchenko’s to Blokhin’s team.
Dynamo’s emotional coach can be easily nailed down for his statements. He is not one of those thinking twice before saying things.
He may regret his statement two years ago when he declared he was going to raise the Ukrainian national team to the leading level in the qualifiers. After that he was exposed to numerous verbal attacks (including this author). It is only now that the we understand: he knew something at the time we didn’t and so he spoke with such confidence.
Tbilisi, where the Ukrainian national team was supposed to reaffirm its status to compete in Germany, in 2006, reminded me of Kyiv in 1995, precisely when we were starting to realize that we were living in a European capital city, when against the backdrop of post-Soviet economic dislocation one was practically unable to discern the contours of today’s prospering megapolis, and when national soccer, after a series of fiascos, was far in the periphery of public conscience. The price Georgia had to pay for its independence proved considerably higher than the price we paid. Soccer for the Georgians today is also far from a major priority — and they are admitting as much, nostalgically referring to the 1960s — 1980s when the Dynamo Stadium, seating 80,000, witnessed spectacular victories of Tbilisi’s Dynamo team. The name of those soccer players are still remembered by every Georgian; they are mentioned as symbols of a remote cloudlessly happy childhood that will never happen again.
Georgians still make good soccer players. Both the young players and veterans of the first team who remember the national’s coach Kaladze, are upholding the best traditions of Georgian soccer. In fact, Georgia’s national team, even without any hopes for vying in any international tournaments, made the Ukrainian counterpart faced with a number of problems which our team failed to solve.
No one can say now why our team showed such poor performance in Tbilisi, allowing the rival team to take advantage of their technique. Our players may have been afraid of getting body injuries, what with the meet in Turkey (September 7), so they thought it best to keep a low profile in the Georgian capital. Rotan’s precise shot toward the end of the first round, helping the Ukrainian team lead the score, seemed a coincidence rather than the Ukrainian team’s superiority. After that the Ukrainian team openly played to keep the score, relying on a counteroffensive strategy. In fact, Blokhin’s national team kept this strategy throughout the qualifiers. Yet on that particular occasion it didn’t work. Twice when Voronin and Rotan could have scored goals the Georgians responded with overwhelming counterattacks climaxing in Gakhkidze’s beautiful goal.
Even after losing the world finals, Oleh Blokhin looked amazingly calm and confident, saying the game ending in a tie was a good result, adding that the Georgian national team’s potential made it worthy of leading place in the group. He also said that he knew why the Georgian team wasn’t in the lead, but wouldn’t specify.
MATURE ENOUGH TO WIN
Within the two hours between the end of the game in Tbilisi and that in Istanbul, where the Turks tied the game with the Danish team (2:2), thus losing the chance to catch up with the Ukrainian team, paving its way to Germany, seemed endless. Our soccer players and coaches were outwardly calm when interviewed at the stadium and at the airport, while having their luggage registered and buying souvenirs, yet all would steal glances at their mobile phones. It was after passport control that they learned about the outcome of the match in Istanbul and that Ukraine could now vie in the world cup finals, for the first time in its history.
Everybody was happy, of course. They danced and opened bottles of champagne. Oleh Blokhin, releasing himself from the first embrace, walked up to a window and turned away from the rest. The man who had just brought Ukrainian soccer back to its proper status did not want anyone to see the tears in his eyes. So let us suppose that we have never seen those tears. That we have only seen a strong, confident, and tough coach.
It probably happened the way it should. Over more than a decade of vying in official international tournaments the Ukrainian national team has gradually turned into just that, a genuine national team rather than one made up of good soccer players, who by a whim of history, found themselves citizens of a new polity. It is symbolic that Blokhin, the world’s soccer player of all times, secured our national team’s victory; also that, back in 1995, Shovkovsky, Rebrov, and Vashchuk, current veterans, used to play wearing the Ukrainian youth team’s T-shirts; these people embody independent Ukraine’s soccer history. Yet this history is apparently only beginning with retuning our soccer its place lost in the early 1990s.
There are still many people who remember when we could only dream of hearing about Ukrainian champions, never of seeing our national team in the world and European finals. Who knows, maybe Oleh Blokhin, as the coach of the Ukrainian national team, will achieve something he could have never achieved as a player of the Soviet national team.
