The famous journalist Mykola Nesenyuk wrote on his Facebook about one former and one current "star".
Mykola NesenyukIn August 1988, Kyiv "Dynamo" played a home match of the USSR championship against "Zhalgiris" from Vilnius. The game didn't cause much excitement either - there were plenty of free seats in the main stadium of the capital of Ukraine. The public did not know that this was the last performance of football player Oleksandr Zavarov as part of Dynamo. He was not considered a superstar at that time - Belanov, Mykhailichenko, Bezsonov, Protasov, Demyanenko and other equally popular and well-deserved footballers played alongside him. Two months later, the World Cup qualifying match between the USSR and Austria took place at the same stadium. Long before the start of the game, only one name could be heard in the packed stands - Zavarov!
What happened in these two months? What happened was that Zavarov moved from Dynamo to the Italian Juventus for a crazy five million dollars at the time. After which, at one point, he became more famous than all his yesterday's partners combined. All the conversations of football fans began to revolve around Zavarov's performances in Italy, which no one had seen at the time - we only had the opportunity to watch the Italian championship in ten years.
In this way, an ordinary game against Austria, which our team beat without any problems in those days, gathered a hundred thousand sold out only thanks to Zavarov - everyone wanted to see the Juventus player live, who two months ago was just one of the Dynamo Kyiv players and did not attract much attention. attention
This is not the first example of the influence of marketing, however unconscious, on football fans, I remembered yesterday, when in the daily advertisement received on my phone, I was offered a package of television channels, on one of which I could "see Mudryk". The same one who, a year and a half ago, was sitting on the bench of Chernihiv "Desna" and was of no interest to anyone. Now, having become a player of the English team "Chelsea", he has become an advertising bait for Ukrainian football fans.
I will not compare Mudryk with Zavarov, who, before moving to Juventus, managed to become the champion of the USSR twice as part of Dynamo and win the Cup twice, win the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup, become the vice-champion of Europe as part of the USSR national team. Mudryk hasn't won anything and anywhere yet, but there is a hundred times more money and advertising around him. Because now we have different times, different football, different marketing. And also another happiness — to see the Wise Man!
Mykola Nesenyuk
