(Beginning, reasons 1 and 2)
(Continued, reasons 3, 4 and 5)
The sixth and the most emotional and spiritual argument of those who defend the ridiculous autumn-spring calendar of our championship - Lobanovsky wanted it! And this is the truth!
Mykola NeseniukIt should be clarified that Valeriy Lobanovsky and Oleh Bazylevych wanted this back in 1975, when they were thirty-six years old and led Dynamo, which was staffed by the best players in the USSR!
Let me remind you that in 1975, Dynamo won the Cup of Cups, defeating Turkish Bursaspor, Dutch PSV, and Hungarian Ferencvaros, which were not and are not football giants then or now. The USSR national team, composed almost exclusively of Dynamo players led by Bazylevych and Lobanovsky, defeated the powerful national teams of Turkey, Ireland, and Switzerland in the qualifiers for Euro 1976.
And most importantly, Dynamo defeated Bayern Munich in the unofficial UEFA Super Cup.
It seemed like a miracle at the time! The team and coaches were exalted to the heavens in the wake of such success! I must admit that in the fall of 1975, I had no doubt that Dynamo would win the Champions Cup in the spring, and that the national team composed of Dynamo players would become the European champion. In the wake of the all-Union football euphoria, everyone, without exception, was ready to fulfill any wish of Bazylevych and Lobanovsky! One of these wishes was to switch the USSR championship to the fall-spring schedule. To this end, the championship of the following year, 1976, was halved, holding it in one round in the spring, in order to start a real "European" championship in August.
But life proved to be harsh: Dynamo, which for the sake of European victories was exempted from participating in the "spring" semi-championship, where the second team played, lost everything in the spring! First, Dynamo dropped out of the Champions Cup, losing to French side Saint-Etienne in March, then the USSR team lost to Czechoslovakia in the European Cup quarterfinals in May, and then, having gone to the Olympic Games, in which participation in 1975 was not even planned (another team was supposed to go there), they failed to overcome the first team composed of professionals, not amateurs.
Meanwhile, the Champions Cup in the spring of 1976 was won again by the same Bayern Munich, confirming the certain randomness of the autumn loss to Dynamo in the then semi-commercial Super Cup. All of this sobered up the football authorities of the time, who asked Bazylevych and Lobanovsky to resign as coaches of the USSR national team and canceled the transition of the championship to the fall-spring schedule initiated by them.
Since then, Valeriy Lobanovsky has never mentioned his desire to switch to the fall-spring calendar. Because he was an outstanding coach and knew how to recognize his own mistakes, albeit not publicly, and not repeat them.
When in 1992 the issue of holding the Ukrainian championship according to the "European" calendar was being decided, Lobanovsky was already in his second year as coach of the United Arab Emirates national team and had nothing to do with this decision! Therefore, the reference to the great coach in the context of the transition of our championship to the "fall-spring" scheme is at least incorrect if we do not use stronger expressions.
(to be continued)
Mykola NESENYUK
