"Dynamo without medals: who is to blame and what to do?

"Dynamo finished the 2022-2023 season in fourth place, the last time the club achieved this "achievement" was nine years ago, in the 2013-2014 season, when the team was led by Oleg Blokhin.

The result is definitely a failure, not only because of the club's name in combination with Dynamo's traditions, but also because before the season started, there was little to suggest such an outcome - the team managed to retain its coach and squad, and against the backdrop of all the turmoil that was taking place in the bowels of its main rivals, it looked like a clear contender for at least silver. Nevertheless, the result is, as they say, in the balance. Let's try to analyse the reasons for the current fiasco and what prospects the team has to regain its lost ground in the near future.

The eyes of the Mister are gone

According to a well-known saying, the team wins and the coach loses. In this case, the team did not win and the coach lost. What was Lucescu's main obstacle in preventing the current disaster? I believe (and I'm not the only one) that the Romanian specialist's usual comfort zone, in which he feels like a fish out of water, and without which he is like a shoemaker without boots. The standard of such a zone, of course, was Shakhtar, where the Romanian specialist had everything - a stadium, a base, infrastructure, satisfaction of transfer requests, and most importantly, the boundless trust of the club's president Rinat Akhmetov, who forgave Lucescu for all his failures, patching them up with multimillion-dollar injections and patiently waiting for the result in the form of building a competitive team. As you know, the result was there, and the team created by Lucescu, among other achievements, also became the winner of the European Cup, which today remains the only one in the history of independent Ukraine.

The subsequent stages of the Romanian specialist's career (at Zenit and in the Turkish national team) were unsuccessful, confirming that the Romanian is not a crisis manager capable of producing results here and now. It would seem that Ihor Surkis returned Lucescu to the usual conditions (albeit not quite "miners'", however) by appointing him to the Dynamo coaching staff in the summer of 2020. Despite the fact that the White and Blues' fans did not accept this move by the club president, to put it mildly, there were opportunities to make plans and implement them. And the championship of Kyiv in the first season with the new coach gave both Ihor Surkis and the coach a very serious trump card.

However, the war that began in February 2022 essentially knocked the stool out from under the coach, and the coach apparently suffered a serious breakdown inside, which probably killed the remnants of his motivation, which was certainly noticeable to everyone who watched the coach's gaze and his constantly extinguished eyes. Which, as you know, are the mirror of the soul. Let's add to this the age factor, which raises a quite logical question - why would a 77-year-old coach who has achieved essentially everything in Ukrainian club football jump out of his pants trying to prove something to someone, even in a situation where football itself is far from being in the first place for Ukrainian citizens today?

According to the latest information, Mircea Lucescu has no intention of leaving Dynamo and plans to complete his contract, which runs until the summer of 2024. It remains to be seen whether this is a desire not to lose his money or to rehabilitate his image before his eventual retirement.

Overextended

As for the team, we have heard a lot about the fact that the level of the current Dynamo players does not allow us to talk about any serious tasks. But here it is worth focusing on the level of play that the current Dynamo players mostly demonstrate, rather than their abilities. The fact that the current players do not properly demonstrate their potential has its reasons. I think that one of them is the consequences of the 2020-2021 championship. Yes, Mircea Lucescu managed to do a good job, charge the team to the right emotional background and achieve results, somewhere due to his authority, somewhere against the backdrop of favourable circumstances (take Shakhtar, who failed in the aforementioned season). But with this success, he squeezed almost everything out of the team, and Dynamo needed a serious rebuild and new quality players. Especially against the backdrop of those who did not play at all under Lucescu - the same Besedin, Popov, and it's not worth talking about Supryaga again. However, it didn't work out with the old baggage, and then the war broke out, after which it was unrealistic to talk about any serious transfers.

And where it was thin, it began to tear in the 2022-2023 season. The first blow to the champion's ambitions was the relegation due to Shaparenko's injury, which largely led to the fiasco in the Europa League group stage. And when Zabarnyi and Tsygankov left Dynamo in the winter, the backbone disappeared, in fact, completely, and it was impossible to look at the team without shuddering. Speaking of Tsygankov, all these months we have been watching a player who was essentially written off at Dynamo in the 10th team of the Spanish championship come to life. I think that everyone has received a visual aid to how important it is not to marinate in your own juice a player who could and should have been released long ago.

In any case, it's too early to sprinkle ashes on your head, the contours of the new team are emerging one way or another. Vanat and Vivcharenko have already made a name for themselves, Andrievsky managed to open up at the end of the season, and Tsarenko and Bol are constantly knocking on the door of the first team. In general, there is someone and something to work with. Another thing is how much time it will take to build a competitive team, especially given that the moment of the start of the rebuild was lost. Perhaps it makes sense to focus as much as possible on this task in the near future, without chasing another set of gold as an end in itself.

Pensioner Lucescu or Shovkovsky on the job?

Another question is who will have to do it. As mentioned above, according to preliminary information, Mircea Lucescu does not intend to leave the club and is going to finish his contract to the end (which is quite logical, given Igor Surkis' words about the upcoming meeting with the coach and discussion of strategic issues with him). It can be assumed that, having been on sick leave and taking a break from football, Mister has finally realised that there will be no ideal conditions and he will have to work mainly with the personnel available to the team today and according to the algorithm that has been formed. Another question is whether his mind is ready to accept this truth at the age of 77. Will we continue to hear excuses about the team living in a bus? It's not the only team that lives like this, there are those who don't even have their own base with a stadium. For example, Zorya, who won bronze. By the way, did their coach complain about logistics? I don't recall it so far.

I should also mention the factor of Oleksandr Shovkovskyi, who managed the team for the last few rounds while Lucescu was in hospital. The legend of Dynamo should be given his due - he managed to give the White and Blues a second wind, the team ran, somehow, but that certainly affected the result. Immediately, the compliments started pouring in, saying that he was the replacement for the retired Lucescu without five minutes.

Shovkovskyi definitely has both his age and the fact that the current Dynamo team knows the inside of the club well. But there are two crucial nuances. Firstly, let's not forget the situation in which he took over the team, albeit in the status of interim. And he took over when it was clear to everyone that the chances of winning the league championship were lost, and the chances of winning bronze remained (and with each subsequent round this was becoming more and more apparent) more theoretical than real. Accordingly, no one expected any miracles from Shovkovsky, no one set any super-tasks. In short, he and the team were playing out the season. A full cycle is another matter, especially if the new coach (if his candidacy is approved by the management) is tasked with regaining what was lost here and now. Is Shovkovskyi himself ready to take off the "acting" prefix, along with the responsibility that will fall on him? And the second, no less (if not more) important nuance is whether Shovkovskyi, in the face of limited resources, is ready to make unpopular and sometimes tough decisions, especially personnel decisions, and to the possible, let's say, misunderstanding of these decisions by club bosses? Will he have enough authority to push his point of view? There are a lot of questions, and only time will provide answers.

No result - to the front?

It seems that in the context of recipes for solving the problems of the current Dynamo, one cannot but mention the attitude of the players to their professional duties. And in this context, we should mention a promise. Namely, the promise of the club's president Ihor Surkis to send players to the front for unsatisfactory results. He spoke about this last autumn, when the signs of what turned out to be a future failure were already more than clear.

"Go out and fight to the bitter end, just like our Armed Forces are fighting today and liberating villages and towns. They give good interviews, say they are for our Armed Forces, that they are ready. But if you are not ready on the field, you guys are of conscription age. Then please, take your weapons and go and defend our country," Surkis said at the time.

It is not known whether the president was speaking out of emotion or whether he had a real mechanism for implementing such an idea in his head. If so, it will at least be useful in the current circumstances, especially if the players are just doing a number. It will definitely be useful to remind them regularly (and probably not just in words) that, despite all the difficulties of today, to put it mildly, they have the opportunity to do their job in relative safety. You see, the number of such reminders will gradually turn into the quality of the game. And, accordingly, the result.

Yevhen Savchuk