Telegram channel Know-Nothing in the football drew attention to a number of inconsistencies in reality in the recent statement of the first vice-president of the UAF Oleksiy Mykhailychenko on the appointment as acting head coach of the Ukrainian team of the coach of "Alexandria" and the youth team of Ukraine Ruslan Rotan.
Alexei Mikhailichenko. Photo: V. RasnerMarch 21, 2023 Internet resource Dynamo.kiev.ua published a fragment of Alexei Mykhailychenko's interview: "Ruslan Rotan knows a lot of players of this team, they passed through his hands. Yes, we are waiting, but to take a coach... He needs time, and there is no time. It was a deliberate decision", - said Mykhailychenko.
Before commenting on that quote, we should note the following. Alexei Mikhailichenko is the first vice president of the UAF, co-chairman of the UAF National Team Committee. He is the former head coach of the National Team U-21 (2004-2008) and the National Team "A" (2008-2009). Thus, it is an experienced and well-known specialist, the sphere of activities and responsibilities of which is just in the field of the national teams of Ukraine.
Now let's go directly to the words of the above quote. In particular, "Ruslan Rotan knows a lot of players of this national team, they have passed through his hands". Ruslan Rotan, who now heads the first national team of Ukraine, is simultaneously the head coach of the U-21 national team and he has a current contract as coach of FC Oleksandria, a club of the Ukrainian Premier League, has been in charge of the Ukrainian youth team since the fall of 2018. As a result, Rotan has served two full cycles of the UEFA U-21 European Championships - 2019/21 and 2021/23.
According to the Internet resource Uaf.ua, he invited 26 players to the "A" team, on the eve of the game against England. Among them are six with whom Ruslan Rotan worked in the youth team. They are Anatolii Trubin, Denys Popov, Ilya Zabarnyi, Heorhii Sudakov, Artem Bondarenko and Mykhailo Mudryk, or just over 23% of the players invited to the March matches of the main team of the country. How that number corresponds to "very many players," I won't decide. After all, this isn't exactly a story about a glass that's either half-full or half-empty.
But let me go further and say that it was a deliberate decision.
According to available statistics, 25.4 percent of the coaches who have worked in the FIFA World Cup and 18.06 percent of the coaches who have led UEFA Euro teams between 2000 and 2018 (we are talking about five FIFA and five UEFA tournaments) had experience leading U-21/23 national teams. If we add to this fact that the England team manager Gareth Southgate was the coach of the English youth team on the eve of his appointment to his current position, as well as the fact that the Spanish U-21 head coach Luis de la Fuentes was appointed to lead the "A" team, certainly the following should be recognized. The presence of the coach of the national youth team as manager of the first team of the national soccer association is quite logical and even a deliberate decision.
As for the timing of the "deliberate decision", the procedure of its adoption, the openness of the process or the mechanism for its presentation at the discretion of the soccer community, apparently, it is a matter of taste and traditions of the UAF management and the management of the Ukrainian Football Association National Teams Committee. We can only sincerely wish good luck to the coach and players", - the statement says.
