There are seven rounds left to play in the Ukrainian championship for the 2022/23 season (not counting the postponed first-round match between Dnipro 1 and Oleksandriya). Kyiv Dynamo still have a theoretical chance of winning the league title, but as of now, being in fourth place in the standings, they are fighting for third place with Luhansk Zorya, who now occupy that position and are 5 points ahead of the Kyiv side.
Photo - Yuri YurievThus, even without giving up thoughts of championship, to begin with Dynamo need to solve the problem of getting ahead of their closest rivals. Moreover, to solve this task with a five-point gap and only seven games remaining.
In this context, it is important to pay attention to the calendars of Dynamo and Zoria finishing the championship.
Dynamo's calendar of the remaining matches:
"Vorskla" - "Dynamo"
"Kryvbas" - "Dynamo"
"Dynamo" - "Chernomorets"
"Alexandria" - "Dynamo"
"Kolos" - "Dynamo"
"Dynamo" - "Veres"
"Metalist 1925" - Dynamo
Calendar of the remaining matches of "Zoria":
"Zorya - Veres"
"Zorya" - "Metalist 1925"
"Metalist - Zorya
Zorya - Ingulets
Zorya - Shakhtar
Alexandria - Zorya
Minay - Zorya
At first glance it might seem that the calendar looks a bit easier for Dynamo. But the problem is that the tournament position can change dramatically after the next two rounds, in which Zoria will certainly take the maximum, and the Kyivians will have to try hard and show their best game, not to allow losing points in the difficult trips to the extremely unyieldingVorsklaV Viktor Skrypnyk and KryvbasYuriy Vernidub. Both sides made good progress in the second round of the championship and for good reason they now sit seventh and sixth respectively. By the way, in the first round Dynamo defeated Kryvbas (3:1), but failed to get three points in a match with Vorskla (1:1).
If Dynamo manage to cope with this first interim task, and after the next two rounds the five-point gap between Zorya and Dynamo does not increase, only then we can discuss whether the Luhansk side will lose points in the matches with Shakhtar, Oleksandriia and Metalist (which is not so simple), giving the Kyiv side a chance to take the third place. Otherwise, the prospects of Dynamo bypassing Zorya become completely vague: to get more than five points from the gap in the remaining five rounds is a task almost impossible to solve in practical terms. Even taking into account the match against Shakhtar on the Zorya calendar.
So, without Dynamo's away wins over Vorskla and Kryvbas there is no point to look at the calendar of the remaining matches (as well as the standings) trying to assess the Bilo-Syni's chances of moving up to the third place. Those two games represent a kind of play-off round for Mircea Lucescu's side without which they cannot expect to advance further in the tournament.
Alexander POPOV
