Honored Coach of Ukraine, Head of the Children's Sports School "Dynamo" named after. Valery Lobanovsky Alexander Ishchenko spoke about the stay in the German city of Cologne of two club academy teams of the age categories U-15 (footballers born in 2008) and U-16 (footballers born in 2007), as well as their participation in friendly matches:
- Thanks to FC Cologne, which invited our students to Germany, our football players got the main thing: the opportunity to be safe, fully train and hold test matches with the best and leading German academies. It is important that every week the players of our teams have game practice, and they gain experience that will be useful in their football future.
It should be noted that Dynamo often play with older rivals, for example, as it was at the Euro Youth Cup tournament in the city of Saarlouis, where all the rivals were born in 2006, and our guys were born in 2007 and 2008. Also, the older rival opposed them in the last match with Borussia Dortmund. It was clear to the naked eye that the Germans were superior to the people of Kiev in terms of height, physical strength, and anthropometric data. But, despite this, we did not lose to any team in desire, movement, dedication, struggle, and looked worthy in all fights.
Although it is difficult for our teams to achieve a positive result in such games, we agreed to them for the sake of faster technical and tactical development of young football players. Competing with older opponents, our guys learn to make decisions faster, act correctly under pressure and get out of it, not give in to the fight, improvise and find non-standard solutions in various difficult game situations. They also progress faster, improving their skills and abilities in all football components. Of course, from a moral and psychological point of view, it is difficult and unpleasant to concede, but our guys must also have such experience so that they draw the right conclusions and effectively work on their own mistakes, preventing them from playing official matches in the future.
But Dynamo players play confidently with their peers. For example, our guys with a mixed team U15 / U16 defeated Alemannia 5:0, in which only U16 guys played, Dynamo U16 defeated their peers from Fortuna (Dusseldorf) 2:1, the game ended in a fighting draw 3:3 Dynamo U15/U16 mixed team with Cologne U16 Also note that with the same score 3:0 Dynamo U16 and U15 defeated their opponents from the Ford Niehl team, who were a year older.
I am convinced that in view of the war in Ukraine and the absence of the DUFL championship and official matches, staying in German Cologne is the best opportunity to save not only the lives of our children, but also their football future. For this, we are grateful to everyone who contributes to their stay there and helps to resolve all emerging issues - the Cologne football club, the city administration, the hotel where the teams live, the football manager who tries to make this stay as comfortable as possible and organizes friendly matches, as well as to all those who support by providing training fields, food and help in other ways.