"The trend is the same," said the hero of the old joke after the fourth deer he threw into the sea drowned after the first three. The same thing happened yesterday with the football team FC Lviv, which for the fourth time (!!!) disappeared from the football map of Ukraine, leaving nothing but entries in match reports and lines in the standings.
Mykola NeseniukThe first FC Lviv appeared in the early nineties, played in the lower leagues and was not particularly memorable. So when it disappeared in the 2000s due to lack of funding, no one paid any attention to it - such "clubs" disappear regularly in Ukraine.
With the second FC Lviv, things were more serious - its owner, surnamed Kindzerskyi, who owned a well-known insurance company at the time, not only brought his "club" to the top flight, but also equipped a training base near Kyiv. It is now Shakhtar's base. Mr Kindzersky's football ambitions ended in 2012, along with his money, and the "club" disappeared as if it had never existed.
The third FC Lviv emerged in 2016 and existed for three years, reaching the first league before disappearing in the same way.
Immediately afterwards, the fourth FC Lviv appeared, which became Veres Rivne, miraculously transported to Lviv at the behest of a certain Kopytko, whom no one had ever seen in the "club".
It seemed that everything would be fine - Veres, before it became FC Lviv, finished sixth in the league, one step away from the European Cup. But that's the fate of those endless FC Lviv - yesterday's Veres, having lost thousands of Rivne fans and only one Lviv fan, slowly but steadily went down. This path ended yesterday.
It is clear why this happened: this is the fate that awaits every Ukrainian "football club" that, by the will of a generous owner, goes from nowhere to the top league in two or three years to compete for "European Cups", from which, if it succeeds, it is eliminated in the first or second round. After that, sooner or later, the owner gets tired of throwing money away and the "club" instantly dissolves into the atmosphere.
And let it be - these are the traditions of our football. But why should we keep naming another project that is bound to fail with the stubbornness of the hero of the joke we mentioned at the beginning? I don't know. Let's wait for the new, fifth FC Lviv. Why not? Lviv residents are Lviv residents!
Mykola NESENYUK
