Mistakes should be acknowledged and corrected. When this is not done, unrecognized mistakes will eventually lead to not very good, and sometimes catastrophic consequences. The introduction of the "autumn-spring" football season in Ukraine was precisely such a mistake, in my deep conviction.
Mykola NesenyukLet me remind you that before that everything was natural - spring was coming, snow was falling, the earth was drying up. They went out to play football on the fresh grass and played until late autumn before it snowed again. Everyone from small children to top level footballers played. This was the case from the beginning of the last century, when we had the first football teams, until 1992, when Ukrainian football leaders decided to introduce the "European calendar" starting the championship in July and ending at the beginning of June with a winter break of three to five months I think it's time to analyze what it gave us.
First, the initiators of the transfer of our championship promised to transfer our football to the "European calendar". And they lied! In practice, the second round of the championship was called the first, and the first was called the second, introducing, in addition to the winter, a summer break in the competitions, which increased every year. What did it do? Football players and coaches have an additional summer vacation in addition to the usual winter vacation. And that's pretty much it. No one thought about the audience - but who and when did we think about them?
Moving on to the second one, the divided football championship automatically reduced the number of people interested in it. Imagine a two-hundred-kilometer car race, which is stopped in the middle of the distance and the participants are asked to gather in a month at the places where they were stopped and continue the competition.
This is how our football championship looks like - after a several-month winter break, most teams at least half update their team, invite newcomers, sometimes change coaches...
In the spring, almost other teams come out to play in the championship, which patient fans, who are no less than football players and coaches, cannot recognize at first - yesterday's idols are no longer playing for, but against your team or vice versa.
That is why in all the championships that take place from autumn to spring, there is no break at all, or it lasts no more than a few weeks while fans celebrate Christmas on other winter holidays. In addition to tradition, there is also common sense - a football championship with a ridiculous three-month break is much more difficult to sell to sponsors and advertisers. Nobody is interested in this either - our football leaders "sell" the championship to each other, transferring money from one pocket to another.
(to be continued)
Mykola Nesenyuk
