(Beginning, reasons 1 and 2)
(Continued, reasons 3, 4 and 5)
(Continued, reason 6)
Now it's time for the arguments against the current Ukrainian championship calendar. The first or rather seventhor rather the seventh, if we start from the beginning of this publication, will be the argument of basic common sense! Football is a summer sport that is usually played on grass in positive temperatures. Only the enemy of this game can move the championship games from June-July to December-March in our climate zone.
Mykola NeseniukThe second (eighth) argument is that holding the championship without a break in the summer used to give our teams an advantage over European rivals in the opening matches of European cup tournaments. For them, August-September is only the beginning of the season - teams reach their highest level closer to winter. Our teams, playing the championship without a break in the summer months, on the contrary, reached their peak form in late summer and early fall. This gave us a certain head start, which we often managed to take advantage of. Why not return to this practice - at least our teams will have much more chances not to be eliminated from the European Cups in the summer!
The third (ninth) argument is the integrity of the season! Starting the championship in the spring and ending it in the late fall, you can well deserve to reward the winners and runners-up, giving them the opportunity to fully celebrate their success and start preparing for the start of the new season in the winter, not to continue the previous one.
In three or four months, it will be possible to draw conclusions from both victories and failures and systematically prepare for the football spring. If it happens that one or more of our teams successfully pass the autumn stage of the European Cups, it will also not hurt them to rest and start preparing for the season earlier than others, taking into account their performance in the European Cups. This will also help to create a fair calendar for the next championship in the winter. Knowing exactly which teams have made it to the spring stage of European tournaments and who will start in these tournaments at the end of the summer, it will be possible to take their interests into account when scheduling matches.
The fourth (tenth) argument is that football in June and July will bring new spectators to stadiums. What could be better than going to a football game on a warm summer evening, meeting your friends there, having a snack between halves and continuing to discuss the game in a cozy bar near the stadium? Once you get used to this kind of life in the summer, you can continue it in the fall, dressed a little warmer. And then in winter, you can watch European championships on TV and wait for spring when you can go to a football game again. And go there until the fall!
And the children? After seeing real football with their parents at the stadium, not on TV, thousands and thousands of our children will try to be like those they saw with their own eyes on the field and cheered for. The very next day they will ask their parents to buy them a ball so they can start playing football right now under the warm summer sun! And as a result, our children's football will become massive again. Maybe not as popular as it used to be, but still popular! Although, why shouldn't today's children fall in love with football the way we once did after following our father to the stadium? Or even more than we did! And then we will have a chance to live to see the days when our stadiums will applaud not mediocre foreigners brought in by agents for stupid money, but our own boys and girls. After all, women's football will also develop!
I could go on and on, giving more and more arguments in favor of a normal championship. But that's enough for now. This, I think, will be enough to make those who are currently spending their own money on football think about the expediency of switching to a more logical, pleasant, useful and cheap (!!!) championship calendar. After all, with a normal calendar, this money can be earned instead of spent!
Mykola NESENYUK
