On the eve of the acting head coach of the national team of Ukraine Ruslan Rotan announced a list of 26 players who will take part in the March training camp of the national team, the main task of which will be preparing for the opening qualifying match for Euro 2024 against the British. I must say that a number of names in the camp of the Blue-and-Yellows surprised, but the most resonant event was, of course, the return to the Ukrainian national team of 33-year-old left winger Yevhen Konoplyanka, who is currently a player of the Polish Cracovia.
Evgeny KonoplyankaIn the Polish team, Konoplyanka received one of the highest salaries - 30 thousand euros per month, but this did not at all guarantee him the role of a key player in the team. In the current season, Evgeniy regularly plays - he has 16 matches in Extraclass, but he does not always appear on the field from the first minutes (9 appearances in the base, 7 as a substitute). In addition, the performance indicators (1 goal and 2 assists) of the Ukrainian also do not stand out in Cracovia, and therefore Rotan, at first glance, was very surprised when he made a strong-willed decision to return his ex-partner in Dnipro to the national team.
The latter circumstance has already caused a lot of controversy and gossip. Many fans have already criticized the acting head coach of the national team for an incomprehensible personnel policy, which, in their opinion, smacks much more of the notorious nepotism than an objective assessment of the situation and the situation.
In fact, as happens most often in such situations, it is extremely difficult to give a monosyllabic assessment of Rotan's decision to call Konoplyanka to the national team. Yes, Yevgeny no longer performs at the top level, and in the Polish championship he plays in the ranks of the team, which is 23 points behind the leading Rakuva (it is interesting that Rotan's coaching staff did not even include one of the important players of this team, Ukrainian Vladislav Kochergin, in reserve list of his application for England!), but on the other hand Konoplyanka is one of the few quality left wingers currently available in Ukrainian football.
In addition to Konoplyanka, Rotan summoned, in fact, only one nominal left winger to England - Mikhail Mudrik. All the rest who are able to play this position (Viktor Tsygankov, Andriy Yarmolenko, Oleksandr Zubkov and even Roman Yaremchuk) do not see it as “native” for themselves, and therefore they can potentially help the Blue-Yellows in this role by force. For someone (Zubkov, for example), fights on the opposite flank are generally very difficult and almost always without the proper degree of efficiency, and therefore it hardly makes sense to start experiments again, and even in a match against the favorite, which is the British.
Mudryk after the January move to Chelsea, by the way, is also absolutely not impressive, and therefore it is not clear whether Mikhail will be able to be a useful "blue-yellow" in the March duel with England, especially considering the probably not the best psychological state of the ex-Shakhtar winger ".
Of course, with his performance in the last matches of the past calendar year, as well as at the start of this year, 22-year-old Dmytro Kryskiv deserved a call to the Ukrainian national team, who became nominally a replacement for Mudryk at Shakhtar, but this midfielder, firstly, recently returned from the infirmary , and secondly, it is also difficult to call him a football player who feels like a fish in water on the left flank of the attack.
Probably, it was the desire to have a player in the squad for whom the position of the left winger is native, and forced Rotan to resort to calling his old friend Konoplyanka. In addition, the personal acquaintance of the acting head coach of the national team with the midfielder of Cracovia also played a role. A dialogue probably took place between them, during which Yevgeny convinced Ruslan Petrovich of his readiness and desire to again be a useful “blue-and-yellow”.
Fans of statistics who are not averse to "digging deeper" can certainly note another factor that could play in Linnet's favor. In his career in the national team, Evgeny has already played three times against the English, and in September 2012, with a magnificent blow, he brought the Blue-Yellows a draw (1: 1) at Wembley, and then our team was very close to triumph, if only not a penalty in the 87th minute, converted by Lampard for a foul committed by Khacheridi.
But more than ten years have passed since that goal, and the answer to another question is much more interesting - is Konoplyanka in his current playing condition still able to be useful to the Ukrainian team? To find the answer, let's look at Eugene's extended statistics in the Polish Extraclass...
Obviously, according to many indicators, there are questions for Konoplyanka. For example, he is not as active on the pitch as he was when he played for Shakhtar (in the 2019/20 season, the winger had an average of 83 game actions in terms of 90 minutes, with their success rate of 71%), but he also has problems with the accuracy of strikes and quite a bit, as for a modern winger, he takes part in martial arts with opponents (in the same Mudrik this season, on average, statistics record 23 duels in 90 minutes, of which 46% are won).
On the other hand, there are at least three indicators that look extremely interesting and may explain why Rotan resorted to help from Konoplyanka on the eve of the match against England.
The first and second are passes to the final third and the opponent's penalty area, respectively. Here, Konoplyanka in the Polish Extraclass has very, very decent statistics as of the current moment. In terms of 90 minutes, Evgeny makes 5.5 passes to the final third and 4.9 passes to the opponent's penalty area, and in both cases the accuracy of these passes exceeds 50%, as can be seen in the above graph.
Mikhail Mudryk, for example, in the 2022/23 season (all official matches, that is, the UPL, the Champions League, the Premier League) has only 2 passes to the final third (67% - accurate) and 3 to the opponent's penalty area ( 45% are accurate). Moreover, if someone objects - they say, the comparison is highly incorrect, since the Premier League and Ekstraklasa are even more different than ice cream and popsicle, it is worth noting that Mudrik's statistics even at the UPL level were plus / minus 10% the same as the average for the season. So in this particular example, the name of the tournament can even be neglected.
Another statistic in which Konoplyanka has almost reached perfection in the current Extraclass draw is crosses. On average, Evgeny has 3.1 such actions per 90 minutes, and their accuracy is 58%. If we evaluate it in a complex way (quantity and quality), then over the past at least eight years of statistical observations, Linnet has never been so effective in the game through sheds. If Yevgeny had a higher quantitative indicator (in the 2015/16 season it was 6.12 per 90 minutes), then his “companion” was certainly low in quality (only 29% were accurate). Or vice versa, when the quality did not let down much (in the 2021/22 season, Linnet’s passing accuracy was 44%), then everything was not very good with the quantitative component (only 2.5 on average per match).
Against England, at the exit of the Ukrainian national team, no matter how much Rotan wants to play attacking and beautiful football, he will have to adapt to the opponent, rely on defense and hope for quick transitions to the attack. In such a tactical situation on the field, a football player who knows how to give a pass to a partner in the final third or a penalty area will be very useful, and banal crosses can also be of tremendous importance, especially considering the fact that the “blue-yellows” are ahead of the bet, according to the application, on tall and strong Dovbik or Yaremchuk.
Therefore, it cannot be categorically stated that the return of Konoplyanka to the national team is solely Rotan’s desire to somehow thank his ex-comrade from Dnipro, or simply to please the honored veteran of Ukrainian football. No, this cannot be ruled out either (after all, the true reasons Ruslan Petrovich was guided by, even if he explains something about this publicly, will remain only in his head and, possibly, in discussions within the coaching staff), but so far it will be possible to give at least a couple of convincing counterarguments against the next "conspiracy theory" (or "nepotism theory"), I categorically do not want to believe in the worst. If only because the time is now difficult - one when the truth becomes more important and more expensive than money, and the interests of one or two people should not be placed above the aspirations and expectations of the entire nation.
Alexey SLIVCHENKO
