While football officials of various stripes puff out their cheeks and do their best to pack the battles of Ukrainian clubs starting this week into a single TV-UPL pool, it's time to remember where this happiness began and where it leads.
Fathers and Sons
The sinless conception of the Premier League took place on November 14, 2007, when in the Kyiv hotel, the club owners expressed their firm intention to enter the 2008/09 season no longer under the auspices of the PFL, which was then in charge of the former vice-chancellor of Shakhtar, but under the banner of a new autonomous education.
The creative working group, which was entrusted with the development of the basic principles of the existence of the UPL, was delegated the most active personnel of the presidential pool - from FC Kharkiv Vitaliy Danilov, from Karpaty Petr Dyminsky and from Kyiv Arsenal Vadim Rabinovich. Anyone who is familiar with the content of a simple fable about a swan, cancer and a pike understands well the features of any such genesis ...
With a creak and a bluff, but in April 2008 it came to the signing of the convention. And then the first split occurred among the founders - 4 out of 16 clubs, namely: Dnipro, Kryvbas, Metallist and Neftyanik-Ukrnafta, considering the creation of the Premier League a hasty process, refused to ratify the developments of the commissioners. But 12 “yes” votes were enough for the UPL to be revealed to the world.
Next came the litigation. First, the District Administrative Court of Kyiv liquidated the UPL, satisfying the claim of the general director of Dnipro Andriy Stetsenko against the state registrar - the legal form of the league allegedly did not comply with the legislation of the country. But the Administrative Court of Appeal, which is higher in the hierarchy of themis cases, judged differently and granted the league a view of legal cohabitation with clubs.
Vitaliy Danilov was subsequently elected its president, whose candidacy was supported not so much by the presidency in the short-lived FC Kharkiv, but by the deputy mandate from the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, at that time the current Prime Minister of Ukraine. And the head of the UPL was a member of the Parliamentary Committee on the fuel and energy complex, which was also perceived as a good bonus...
I won’t take it as a verbatim statement, but President Danilov almost never missed solemn ceremonies on the occasion of all kinds of awards and other top football parties. Which on his part looked like a big sign of attention to colleagues in the shop. But in February 2016, he successfully handed over the tired reins, and now, within the walls of the Verkhovna Rada, he represents the Kharkov regional committee of the rebranded Batkivshchyna.
Once, by the way, the current head of the UAF, Andrei Pavelko, was a party member of the ex-president of the UPL. Which, obviously, later caused Danilov's football resignation, which happened shortly after the new team, delegated here with the blessing of the fifth president of Ukraine, settled in the Football House.
As a wedding toastmaster, the Premier League was given two years to lead Vladimir Geninson, who left no memory of himself, except for a noisy upgrade of the UPL emblem, so that in 2018 he would hand over the drum and timpani to the Swiss harlequin Thomas Grimm. However, the puppet from the canton of Bern did not have enough luck for a long time either, and when he finally fell down, the empty uniform had to be pulled on by a homegrown executive cadre with the proud surname Wild.
He also got the abstracts of the Rabinovich group.
founding fathers
So, having received a glimpse of the managerial core of the football project with a beautiful logo, let's move on to those for whom all this happiness was started.
Since the conception of the UPL, a lot of water has flowed under the bridge, but the chronicles still preserved for grateful descendants a list of founding clubs of the Ukrainian Premier League. Which history itself divided into three diverse groups: participants in all UPL tournaments, those who survived the bankruptcy procedure, and those who did not survive it.
The first included 4 of the 16 creators of the league, and these are (in alphabetical order) Vorskla, Dynamo, Zorya and Shakhtar. That is, by the beginning of the 2022/23 season, not every founding father swam to the middle of the Dnieper. And only a quarter of those who started hastily got out on this shore!
The second group is represented by 6 Phoenixes resurrected in a new image. It included Dnipro (now it is Dnipro-1), Karpaty (now they are in the first league A), Kryvbas, Metalist, Zaporozhye Metallurg (the first league B) and survived the change of organizational and legal form "Chernomorets".
Finally, those who have not yet returned to big-time football in any changed face, or who managed to sink twice - there are also 6 of them: Arsenal Kyiv, Transcarpathia, Metallurg Donetsk, Neftyanik Akhtyrka, Tavriya and FC "Kharkiv".
This ranking eloquently testifies to how thorough and verified the intentions of the clubs were when they undertook to create the Premier League. After all, their plans did not always collapse under the pressure of force majeure in 2014 and 2022. By and large, the war as such finished off only Tavria with Metallurg Donetsk, the rest of the founders left big-time football, even for a while, for quite natural reasons.
Kindergarten
But now, almost every one of those who survived bankruptcy and restored the status of members of the UPL, as well as newly arrived projects with an uncertain prospect, seriously claims that their voices are not only heard, but their opinions on the development of football in Ukraine for years to come will certainly be taken into account . If someone does not agree with them, he does not obey the will of the majority, and let him go ... to the ban!
Listening to individual cosmonauts speaking in a similar vein, you involuntarily wonder how long the new Kryvbas will differ from the old? And how big is the difference between "Minaj" and "Transcarpathia", which established the UPL? Or how much more grandiose are the plans of FC Lviv, which did not recruit players for the application for the season, than the aspirations of Danilov FC Kharkiv to rise? ..
There are also questions to the UPL itself. Why, in 15 years, has it not acquired at least some modern official website with content that corresponds to the spirit and pulse of the times, as well as the status of a professional league? But this pretentious directory with a starry logo cannot imagine its future without a single telepool. Just like in the fable about the fish: "... And so that you yourself serve her, and be on her parcels."
And more about the dictatorship of the football house committee. The acting head of the UPL recently announced that by decision of the UAF executive committee, the rights to broadcast Premier League football matches do not belong to the clubs, but to the UAF, which wants to reward them, but wants to, punishes and delegates them to the UPL...
With the same success, Mr. Wild, referring to the same sources, can continue to proclaim anything. For example, threaten to disobediently take away their property rights to club arenas (who have them), to contracts with players, or to nationalize e-mail, telegraph channels and mobile communications. You can really expect anything from UAF and manual UPL.
However, unfortunately for them, these and other offices are forced to smoke the sky within the legal boundaries of the state of Ukraine. Whose legislation, at the very least, but still regulates and protects the property rights of various types of business entities. Football including.
And the rights of clubs to broadcast their home matches are legally inalienable. Those who have an alternative point of view on this matter, including those who vote by any majority and neglect the morality of the fables, let them dare to encroach on the primordially alien...
Igor LINNIK
