No matter how one might joke about it, but Hryhory Surkis really is the honorary president of the Kyiv Dynamo soccer club, leaving day-to-day club-related business to a different person, First Vice President Ihor Surkis. And when it became necessary to get first-hand information about Dynamo’s affairs, people in the know advised me to turn precisely to him, not to Surkis Sr. Our conversation confirmed that the Dynamo management reads very attentively all that the press in general and The Day in particular writes about the team and, of course, does not agree with everything written. But this time we had a common point of departure: Dynamo’s performance in the Champions League is a failure and a humiliating blow to the Ukrainian champion’s prestige. So what caused such an unexpected and unpleasant result?
“It is the easiest thing to refer to external factors, such as bad referees, bad luck, injuries, and so on. All this did take place, and if there had been a different conjunction of circumstances, we would now be preparing for the Champions League second leg. But to make such conclusions means to further depend on the same accidents, on one accurate or inaccurate shot, on one mistake by the goal keeper, or on one referee’s decision. I think there are more deep-rooted causes of Dynamo’s current failures, which requires close scrutiny, not here and now but in cold blood after analysis. We should not let emotions run hot on the heels of a few unsuccessful matches. Our goal remains the same: to put Dynamo on a qualitatively new level of development.”
“After the unexpected defeat in Kyiv at he hands of PSV, the press first published your interview with quite biting criticism of the players who failed to rise to expectations, then there was Valery Lobanovsky’s press conference where he put the blame almost equally on the team and journalists, and, finally, there was an appearance by Hryhory Surkis defending Lobanovsky from the press, including that of Moscow. Do these developments mean you have somewhat changed the assessment of the team’s failure from negative to optimistic?”
“We must not forget that Dynamo is the visiting card of this country, the flagship of our soccer. This is why all who have anything to do with the club should do their best for the team to start winning again. What is better: to hang our dirty laundry out in public or to start future-oriented work now? I do accept criticism, the team needs it both when it wins and loses. It is normal when we criticize and are criticized but only to a certain extent. When Lobanovsky came under fire, we thought it necessary to underline our full trust in Dynamo management and this outstanding expert. I see no people now capable of professionally criticizing the team’s training process. I have seen this process for more than one year, I have seen the way players work: they work hard. One can assess the result: this is the right of both spectators and journalists, but before taking on Lobanovsky, one has to deeply understand the training process.”
“Then who do you think can assess this process?”
“Do you think I will do it? I am simply a functionary, my task is to do my utmost for the team to have all the necessary training facilities. The team has been provided with all this at a high level, and the work is ongoing. We are completing the construction of a soccer training complex in Koncha-Zaspa unparalleled in Europe, and the club continues to develop its infrastructure. The fields built by the club daily receive several shifts of children and youths of all ages. Many other things are being done every day for Dynamo. At the same time, the training of players is the preserve of the coach in whom we place complete trust. Is there anyone to challenge Lobanovsky?”
“Dealing with the logistical support of this country’s leading club, you cannot help seeing that, in addition to a few soccer clubs that have a sound financial base thanks to their founders, Ukraine also has dozens of teams without sources of funding. Mass and children’s soccer is simply out of the question: it is vanishing. So we can understand the logic of a fan when he says it would be better to invest the millions now being spent on purchasing foreign players in children’s and young people’s soccer, which could give us a hundred of times more players of this class.”
“The money being spent on Dynamo has been earned fairly by the club founders, we’ve paid our taxes, and we should only thank the people who generously help not only our club but also Ukraine’s national team, for they donate money not for their own glory or prestige but for the prestige of Ukraine. As to provincial soccer, this is what Hryhory Surkis now deals with as president of the national soccer federation. Amateur soccer and children’s sports schools are going to get funds, but this will be done in a way making it possible for the funds to reach the right destination, not an easy thing to do under our bureaucratic conditions. The experience of our Dynamo organization, where everybody from children’s coaches to first-string stars work for the final result, will be applied nationwide. This will undoubtedly provide tangible results in the immediate future.”
“You said Dynamo is today the flagship of our soccer. But objectively the flagship is different now: Shakhtar from Donetsk, the only club still representing Ukraine in the Eurocups. Do you think this country’s soccer center could shift to the regions, and Dynamo will concede its leading role to other clubs?”
“I am very happy about Shakhtar’s success. That club’s president is a friend of mine, and I was one of the first to congratulate him on beating Arsenal. Rinat Akhmetov is doing for soccer in Donetsk the same as we are doing in Kyiv. Much is being done in Kryvy Rih, where the Kryvbas president is also a good friend of mine. The more there are strong soccer clubs capable of doing a good job in Europe, the better it will be for us all. Clearly, friendly relationships in life do not preclude us from being implacable rivals on the soccer pitch — but only during the game. Then we are friends again. I am to a large extent a man of the old Soviet times. I feel awkward when people abroad wish us a victory over their teams because they do not support concretely either Real, Bayern, or Manchester United. I don’t understand it. Formerly, the whole country equally rooted for Kyiv Dynamo and Moscow Spartak, when they played as representatives of their state. I still support Spartak when it plays a Eurocup match with a team other than a Ukrainian one. I do the same for Shakhtar. I will do my best to go to Donetsk for the first game against Celta and will be Shakhtar’s staunchest fan. I would like it to be always like this: all Ukraine, not only Kyiv, Donetsk, or any other city, cheers our teams in European competitions. As to who will be the flagship, I do not think a few defeats can damage Dynamo’s prestige. We will do our utmost to prove our right to be Ukraine’s best. We’ll be proving this on both domestic and foreign soccer fields.”
“Covering the Manchester match on television, a commentator told us in detail about that club’s budget, profits, and expenses. And not a single word about our team. Do you think this closeness and absence of full information about the club robs Dynamo of supporters because people no longer feel the erstwhile harmony. Audience turnout is ebbing. Can soccer exist without audiences?”
“I have already spoken about money, and I think it is television that robs us of spectators. I have been a soccer aficionado since childhood, when I always tried to make my way to a soccer match, even when I had no ticket. Then we had fewer spectacles and less entertainment. Life was different. Today a soccer fan can regularly watch at home the games of the world’s best teams. It is not so easy to draw him out to root for his team when even Barcelona and Real fail to draw full stadiums in Kyiv and when most tickets for the PSV match cost five hryvnias but, still, were not sold out. I think a mistake was once made somewhere, so now we must defend and advertise our nation’s soccer the way we do the national producer. I say again we are doing our best for Dynamo to play well. We should perhaps work more to popularize our soccer. I was told in Milan all the expenditures on our Andriy Shevchenko had already been paid off, for example, several million worth of jerseys have been sold all over the world. And he is our player who brought no profit here. We must learn to present and sell our soccer.”
“Our politicians have already learned this. What is your attitude toward the fact that political parties rush under the colors of a soccer team or a team enters a party, as Dynamo once went to SDPU(o) or Karpaty the Agrarians? Who stands to gain from this, the politicians or the players?”
“I have never been or ever will be a politician. So I am not empowered to speak on behalf of parties or politicians. All I can do is to express my personal point of view. Soccer has always been and will be involved in politics, whatever one might say. This can’t be changed. Is it politics when the president of a country comes to cheer the national team? Naturally, it is politics, but what’s bad about that? And it was not we who began it. The renowned Silvio Berlusconi, owner of Milan, has never concealed he once became (and may become again) prime-minister owing to his team’s success. I stress again this is my personal point of view.”
“Then, please, what is your personal viewpoint on when Dynamo will again reach the level that allowed it to outplay or play on a par against Europe’s best teams - instead of feeling joy like now about ‘fraying Manchester’s nerves’?”
“When I talked to Andriy Shevchenko recently, he said he would never see in his life a team of the spring 1999 Dynamo type. There will never be that kind of relations in the team, that kind of collective desire to scale the highest peaks of soccer. We have to believe Andriy, for he sees the human relationships in Milan. Back in 1999, we came just a little short of playing in the Champions League finals. Now we have to bring up a new team. We managed to hold down Rebrov and Shevchenko for one and a half and two and a half years, respectively. These people had overgrown the Ukrainian championship’s level, so we could not possibly keep them in. I would not say Dynamo does not have the prospects it used to. The team was well prepared but had bad luck this year. Just listen to what the Manchester United coach said about Dynamo. I do not think such an expert as Ferguson will lavish backhanded compliments. Alex Ferguson pointed out Dynamo’s high team spirit and promising future. And no one conceals that we are stripped today of the attack potential we had with Shevchenko and Rebrov. Players of this level can’t be selected or trained overnight. I have already said we are not going to make rash decisions about specific players. Let the boys relax a little. Incidentally, they are having a full-fledged vacation, not some ten or twelve days, for the first time in the last few years. Then we will get together and start work. Of course, there will be changes in the squad. We will invite some and say goodbye to somebody else.”
“The practice of purchasing players from the former soviet republics or former socialist countries has not yet justified itself. But it is not so easy to bring up players of Shevchenko’s and Rebrov’s level in our domestic championship.”
“I fully agree with you. We must increase the quality of the national championship. But it is very difficult to do this only by the efforts of Lobanovsky, Akhmetov, and Surkis, although we are doing our best. I hear you also wrote that several rich clubs grab all the best players and bleed all the other Ukrainian teams dry. But does it mean we should sit unruffled and see a talented soccer player waiting for a pittance from his team and thinking about how to earn his living instead of training? So far, only two or three clubs have the conditions to foster the adequate growth of their players. And these teams are bound to come off best. This also exists in other countries, if in a different form, when two or three leading rich clubs contest the championship, with others only occasionally intervening in their rivalry. I think you can give examples by yourself. Wouldn’t it be interesting if first place in the Ukrainian championship were contested by Shakhtar and Dynamo? I want to say again the main thing is that both Dynamo and our friends in Shakhtar work for Ukrainian soccer as a whole, not for private interests. The reconstructed and new-built stadiums, pitches, and training bases are and will be the property of Ukraine; nobody will ever take it away. The players our clubs have brought up will also increase and add to Ukraine’s prestige.”
