Last Monday evening, standing on the packed Olympic Stadium grandstand that was crazy with joy over the victory of the Ukraine national soccer team over the team of Sweden, I recalled the same grandstand in August 1998, when the overcrowded stadium was equally crazy with joy over Ukraine’s victory over Russia in a Euro-2000 qualification match. At the time, the stadium was different, our fans did not wear our team’s jerseys, and everything around was different to what it is now. No wonder at all, for it was in the last century.
What was in common between these soccer games, spaced out by a distance of 12, when our soccer and our state were in the making, was the fact that the Ukraine team could not and had no right to lose. There were different reasons for this in 1998 and now. But the players, who came out on the pitch then and now, were aware that they must play as never before and win. Why did they think so? Owing to many factors from which it is not so easy to single out the main one.
Let us start with our national team’s players and coaches. The seemingly optimistic comments shortly before Euro-2012 smacked of some rituality. You could see that there was no true belief in our team, which was quite logical – there were no objective reasons why Ukraine should be considered a European championship favorite. Ukraine does not have any world- or European-level stars which would be drawing the soccer world’s attention. Of course, there is an incredibly popular Andrii Shevchenko, but it is everybody’s opinion that the 35-year-old forward is past his best years. In the leading Ukrainian soccer clubs, those who have been ruling the roost for a long time are mediocre foreigners, while our players usually play up to them. Soccer club owners, who spend around hundreds of millions, demand that the limit on foreigners be lifted – they claim that our clubs are doomed to defeats in international tournaments unless they have foreign players. It is perhaps only in Dynamo Kyiv and Dnipro that Ukrainian passport-holding individuals continue to hold sway, but these clubs are also squandering fantastic money to buy new foreigners, quite to the detriment of their young players.
Traveling abroad and mingling with the foreign fans who visit us, I could see hundreds of times that nobody in the world knows our soccer players except, naturally, for Andrii Shevchenko. But how on earth can they know them if Europe does not watch Ukrainian championships, the Ukrainian clubs that have achieved some success in European cups are represented by the Brazilians and Argentines, and the national team ranks sixtieth something on the global rating list and made its way through a qualification tournament only once in its history?
I could go on, but it is quite clear under what psychological pressure the Ukraine team was on the eve of Euro-2012 which it joined as a tournament’s co-host rather than by a sporting principle. What could ease this pressure was only a long-awaited good performance.
I do not know when exactly our players felt that they were not only able but simply obliged to win this match. Maybe, when the Swedes began to lose the encounters into which our guys would enter decisively without any signs of fear or uncertainty? Maybe, when the gigantic Zlatan Ibrahimovic bumped into the unyielding Yevhen Khacheridi and Taras Mykhalyk? Or, maybe, when Andrii Yarmolenko and Yevhen Konoplianka dribbled, virtuoso style, past their opponents on the flanks several times?
It is easier to say that everything happened after Shevchenko had twice outrun Sweden’s defenders, received passes from the flanks and scored two goals. But scoring a goal requires skill. Shevchenko is undoubtedly a great master of soccer, but he was unable to decide on his own the outcome of the national team’s major matches even in his best years. Our superforward needed a team whose attacking efforts he could finish with a sure shot. And this team was on the pitch.
It is hardly worthwhile to recall the many mistakes our players committed in the match against Sweden. There is no such thing as “victory on points” in soccer – in soccer, the one who has scored more goals wins. And, to score more, all you need is not so much to know how as to wish to do so. The very desire to win helped Ukraine players in the crucial moments of the game. It is this desire that stopped the Swedes who did not expect to face such fierce resistance.
It turned out that the Ukrainians do know how to play soccer, at least not worse than the Swedes. Coach Oleh Blokhin’s team has proved that it is not a guest invited to Euro-2012 out of courtesy but a full-fledged participant in the competition capable of winning and laying claim to something more than just to take part in the European championship’s final stage. The main thing now is to acknowledge the well-deserved victory over Sweden and draw proper conclusions.
Let me recall again the dramatic Euro-2000 qualification tournament, when our team first beat Russia, then drew the game with France, and finished with an unsuccessful duel with Slovenia. With due account of the bitter experience that our players have more than necessary, we should understand that if Ukraine play the way they played against Sweden, they will be able to adequately confront any rival.
