Lobanovsky's mistake

This was in the fall of 2000. Valery Lobanovskyi, who coached Dynamo Kyiv at the time, had been regularly reading my articles in newspapers for the second year, which was reported to me by good people.

At that time, Lobanovskyi and I were already personally acquainted. Once he saw and was shown an article in a Kyiv newspaper under my signature, which was not about football, but about politics. Lobanovsky could not know that I wrote about politics and not only about politics long before I started writing about football. For him, as well as for everyone at that time, the situation was the norm, when there are real journalists who write about politics, economics, and so on, and there are "sportsmen." Freaks who dwell on all these goals, points, seconds and write about it, few need articles.

Lobanovskyi's surprise was so strong that at the very first press conference he angrily answered someone's question: "And you ask Nesenyuk - he knows everything about you - both in football, and in politics, and in rural farming!"

Why did I remember this now, more than twenty years later? Because I still have to hear or read criticism that I write not only about football, but also about everything else. Like, write only about football players and don't get into politics!

What is there to say? I could understand Valery Lobanovsky, who grew up and was brought up in a strictly regulated society of advanced socialism, while achieving unprecedented heights in his profession. He looked at life as people raised in the fifties of the last century looked at him - you can only do what is allowed, and what is not allowed should be asked.

But we live in a different time! At a time when everything is possible! Therefore, I have the audacity to say that football is an integral part of life. Like football, like the country! Like football, like the economy! Like football, like politics! And not only because certain football players sometimes campaign for someone or advertise something.

Isn't it obvious that the football economy in our country is an exact copy of the political, economic, and cultural economy? Not even a copy, but a parody! You only need to look closely to understand that football processes run parallel to other life processes and mutually influence each other. And not only in our country. Remember the world football final that ended in Qatar the other day. There was enough politics and economics for everyone!

I think that Lobanovskyi, if he had lived to this day, would also have understood this. And I would not be surprised because a football journalist can understand not only football.

Mykola Nesenyuk