The well-known journalist Mykola Nesenyuk spoke about the struggle among the outsiders of the current Ukrainian championship.
Mykola Neseniuk"I consider the central match of the current round of the football championship to be the game between Metalist and Lviv to be held on Sunday in Uzhhorod, which will not require any payment to the broadcasting company. The same one that a few days ago announced that it was stopping broadcasting the Ukrainian championship, but in fact continues to charge viewers for watching it. And so on...
Why do I insist on the special importance of the match between the last two participants in the championship today? Because it depends on this game whether there will be a sporting struggle in the last five games of Metalist and Lviv this season, or vice versa - the teams will give up trying not to be relegated on a sporting basis and will give away their fifteen points to their rivals, putting those who have not played them in a better position than those who have scored points with them in a real fight.
Please don't think that I am accusing or suspecting anyone of anything. It's just that I have experience and memory that tell me that all teams that have lost their chances of staying in the league somehow immediately stop scoring points. Of course, before each game they publicly vow to give their all to win or at least not to lose.
But somehow it turns out that they do lose. They lose to those who need those points. Theoretically, both Metalist and Lviv can still cling to the saving fourteenth place. Why not? Both teams have already played with the contenders for high places, and the rest of the rivals do not look stronger. But will they fight instead of giving away points to everyone? I really want to believe so. But there are some obstacles to this process.
First of all, it is the recent history of these teams. Where they came from and how they got into the league of the strongest. In this respect, Metalist and Lviv are very similar. Because the current Metalist is not the Metalist that once disappeared from the horizon without paying off multimillion-dollar debts under "white" contracts registered with UEFA, but the Kharkiv Metal that was renamed two years ago.
Likewise, the current Lviv is not the three teams that played in different leagues since the early nineties, but the renamed Veres from Rivne. The same first "people's club" in Ukraine that disappeared after a former Lviv resident named Kopytko turned out to be the "people" and easily and naturally turned Veres into Lviv.
So neither Metalist nor Lviv won a place in the league through sport. Each in their own way, but we have a fact, along with the understanding that what came easily will go just as easily. And after the founder of the current Metalist followed the example of Kopytko, whom no one had seen either live or on TV for almost ten years, and also became an invisible man, everything came together. Why would both invisible men spend a lot of money on "football clubs" that no one needs but them? And don't get me started on the "sell-outs" in Kharkiv at the first league matches. Before the war, people there always obediently went where the local authorities told them to go.
There is no doubt that after the likely relegation, both Metalist and Lviv will disappear without a trace. This is not the first time they have done this. But there is another option, albeit an almost fantastic one: both teams gather all their strength and will and win the remaining games, thus retaining their place in the championship. They can do it!
If this happens, the teams may well have fans who are impressed by the selfless play and will to win.
Because it is risky to exist with one fan. Especially when he is somewhere far abroad and shows no signs of public life," Neseniuk wrote on his Facebook page.
