Last week, we experienced a wide range of feelings as we worried about our youth team at the European Championships. The triumphant journey was overshadowed by the semi-final defeat. How do you rate the national team's performance? The main task, getting to the Olympics, was solved. Still, there is a lot to talk about.
Ruslan RotanA prominent journalist of the past, Arkady Galinskiy, in his article on the 1988 UEFA EURO final, describing Lobanovskiy's decisions during that match, noted that the changes made by the Soviet head coach were aimed at avoiding defeat. At the time this caused a wave of controversy and a storm of indignation, typical of Galinskiy's material. But if we review that final again, we will notice that after Belanov's unrealized penalty the Dutch were rather closer to 3-0 than the Soviet players to 2-1.
And in reality Lobanovskiy was right. If his team had lost the final match not 0:2, but 0:3 or 0:4, would those silver medals have been so honourable? How many football fans remember who the head coach of the USSR national team was in the 1972 final, which was devastatingly defeated by the Germans by 0-3? And so all fans remember a decent game by our team with some chance of success...
Like probably the majority, I don't like it when they say black on white and vice versa. It was terribly offensive when reading and listening to the comments of some experts who, despite the victories of our youth team, kept insisting that they play badly and show old-fashioned football...
It also caused irritation that after the devastating defeat of the team in the semi-finals some voices were heard that it was ok, you are in the Olympics anyway, but the boys should be thanked. I wonder if at the very end of the game the score was 1:6 (and there really was a sixth goal), would everything have been fine?
But not so much the strange optimism of some fans of the game as the post-match statements by Ruslan Rotan, the youth team's head coach, were striking to the core. It turns out that the main reason behind such an outcome of the semi-final was the fact that the team were held up in some airport hangar. Then, though, it was added that if he (Rotan) and his team had been given another day off, one could have argued about the result.
I don't understand what Rotanj is talking about? World and European Championships are fast-moving tournaments, the specificity of which is exactly the ability to recover players quickly. That's the essence of the job of a national team manager. He must be able to do just that, and not complain about the fact he has had to face such circumstances. It is like a lorry driver complaining that he needs to travel at night, or a porter at a train station saying that the bags are heavy.
It is the same with the hangar. Has no one ever faced the problem that you have to wait somewhere or sit somewhere? The usual specifics of flying.
Anyway, after listening to all of that, I caught myself thinking: "The most disgusting thing is when football problems are justified by non-football reasons. If something prevents you from playing, announce it before the match. But to talk after the game, and even more so after a loss...
Rotan could have come out and said that they overestimated themselves a bit, they wanted to play football, just like in a group game with Spain, but, sorry, it did not work. We will continue to work... But it was said about the hangar.
And here we come to where we started. There are matches you can't lose much. Struggle, die, but don't let on. There are matches in the course of which you can't quit playing and fall apart because you will be laughed at later. And this should be managed by the head coach. And if that happens, then try to explain why your players stopped playing after the score 1:4?
Can you remember many international matches which Lobanovskiy lost by four goals? Yes, of course, he is the Maestro, he is above everyone, he is forever. But it is not about Lobanovskyy, it is about the approach itself. It is in the level of responsibility both to themselves - young players and young coach, and to the fans who, so to speak, "tamed" by their excellent play both in the group, and in the quarter...
Therefore, I wish Ruslan Petrovich to be a modern man, not only in football as a game, but also in his post-match reactions. Because, one doesn't exist without the other, and if they start to clash with each other, it's the coach who loses. And he still has a lot of work to do. And prepare the team for the Olympics.
Artem Zholkovskiy for Dynamo.kiev.ua
