Serhii Kovalets on Rakytskyi's sending off: "A roll is a lost position, a belated action"

Renowned national coach Serhiy Kovalets gave his opinion on the resonant red card for Yaroslav Rakitskiy, which the defender received after a tackle in the 8th round of the Ukrainian league match against Rukh (1-1), in a commentary for FootBoom.

- If we look at this episode in the dynamics, the roll did not raise any questions. It is noteworthy that neither the main referee of the match, Vitaliy Romanov, nor the linesman, who were nearby and saw the moment from different angles, recorded a violation of the rules. It was only after a tip from the VAR and watching the video that the referee decided to send off Yaroslav. This is a trend in modern football, now it's like in basketball - every episode is viewed from different cameras and any contact can have consequences.

- Mircea Lucescu has repeatedly said that he forbids his players to go for a tackle in their own penalty area. Perhaps soon coaches will ban the tackle altogether?

- I wouldn't be surprised if in the near future, tackles in football will disappear. I watch a lot of matches in the top leagues and notice that the trend is to minimise tripping.

- Why?

- Firstly, a tackle is a lost position, a belated action when the player is already trying to correct the situation he has allowed. Secondly, the organisers want to preserve the health of the main stars, and these are usually technical, fast players who suffer from such elements more often than others. People like Messi, Mbappe, Neymar. Even now, there are top teams that hardly ever use rolls.

- Which ones?

- For example, Barcelona. On Sunday, I watched the London derby between Arsenal and Tottenham. It was a spectacular game with high intensity, in which there were almost no tackles. Our Sasha Zinchenko generally tries to always play without this element and, as you can see, it does not prevent him from being competitive in the Premier League defence.

- But Rakitskiy, who, along with Zinchenko , is also a graduate of Shakhtar's academy, is still a representative of the high school football, where tackles were an indispensable attribute

- They used to say: "Football without tackles is like borscht without tomatoes". Without this element, it's hard for me to imagine, for example, Lobanovskyi's Dynamo, which once set the trend in Europe. Back then, it was a kind of mainstream. But football doesn't stand still, new requirements emerge that we need to learn to meet.

Serhiy Sytnyk