(Beginning)
Now for the third thing - European cups, which are supposedly much more convenient to play in than the fall-spring championships. They say that these cups are for "fresh" players, not last year's champions and winners, who are now in the best shape. So what? Have we had many "fresh" champions in the last thirty years?
Mykola NeseniukOnly two (!!!!) teams have won all Ukrainian championships since 1993, and it is unlikely that anything will change in the coming years. Even before the season starts, Shakhtar knows for sure that it will either play in the Champions League next year or fight for this right in the qualifying rounds.
As for those who don't know this and are fighting for the right to play in lower-ranked European competitions in the league, it is also more convenient for these teams to gain this right six months before the start of the tournament. In order to prepare, recruit and attract sponsors for seven to eight months in advance with the expectation of guaranteed participation in European tournaments. And not to be urgently "reinforced" by an unknown person in July to the delight of agents and other football "bugs". To end up almost guaranteed to fly out of those cups in the first round. Or in the second, if you're lucky.
Time to move on to the fourth - "the interests of the national team", which will suffer terribly from the normal calendar of the championship along with the championship itself. After all, during the World Cup final, the best players of the leading Ukrainian clubs will be in the national team and will not be able to help their teams in the championship matches! A serious argument! Especially when you remember how many times our national team has played in the World Cup final tournament and had no problems with the "smart" Ukrainian championship.
Let me remind you - the Ukrainian national team has made it to the World Cup only once in more than thirty years of holding an independent championship according to the "fall-spring" scheme! Wasn't it worth breaking almost a century of football traditions to the pigs for this?
And as for the absence of the best players of the leading clubs during the World Cup, let's remember the African Cup of Nations, which takes place every two years in February, when the leading European championships, in whose teams hundreds and hundreds of Africans play, are in full swing! And nothing - they let those Africans join their national teams and do not demand that they suspend their championships for the duration of the final tournament of the African Cup of Nations!
And given that half of the players of the national team of Ukraine are now playing in the championships of other countries, and I hope there will be more and more such players, the loss of a few players for a couple of weeks will not affect the performances in the championship of those Ukrainian teams from which they will be called up to the national team. Even without the World Cup, these teams always have at least half a dozen injured and disqualified players. And it's okay - they cope!
Why, in fact, should more than fifty Ukrainian teams playing in three national championship leagues have to sit idle for more than a month in the best weather for football? Let their fans, having watched the World Cup matches on TV, go to the stadiums and compare the level of play of their favorites with the best players in the world! Who would be worse off? You may say that I have forgotten about the European Championship, which our national team has qualified for only twice on a sporting basis only after the tournament was expanded from 16 to 24 teams? I haven't forgotten - it's the same as the World Cup.
The fifth argument of the supporters of the fall-spring calendar is infrastructure development. They say that this will give us more comfortable stadiums with heated fields. No one has yet spoken out about heated stands. And it's a shame - our people are only able to go to the stadium en masse to freeze for more than two hours in sub-zero or close to it only a few times a year when a Real Madrid team with world-famous players comes to visit us.
What does the Ukrainian championship have to do with it? For such matches, we only need a few stadiums, which we have had for a long time. And while a Champions League match against Bayern Munich or Barcelona can still recoup the costs of preparing the arena for a game in winter weather, playing the Ukrainian championship there is a total loss! And why should we endure them?
(to be continued)
Mykola NESENYUK
