Mykola Neseniuk: "Play or fight?"

Renowned journalist Mykola Nesenyuk commented on the latest matches of the Ukrainian domestic football calendar on his Facebook page.

Every time players and coaches of Ukrainian football teams complain about fatigue that prevented them from playing properly on the third or fourth day after the previous match, I think of players and coaches of foreign teams who constantly play official matches two or three times a week and never complain about it. Interestingly, Ukrainian footballers who play in the championships of England, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium and other countries do not overwork there for some reason either.

What is the problem? Are the players and coaches from our championship, let's say, being disingenuous when they explain their poor performance by fatigue? Of course they are, because who wouldn't want to give up an extra excuse to a boss who is unhappy with the result? But it's not that simple. After all, I heard complaints about "fatigue" from our coaches and players back in those distant years when the current masters of the polyurethane ball had not yet been born, as well as the parents of many of them. And only recently I have formulated the reason for this phenomenon, which I will introduce to you.

To begin with, listen to the words of our footballers, coaches, commentators, and observers. When talking about football, they use the phrases "fight for the ball", "win the head-to-head", "not give up in the fight" and so on ad infinitum. This is the reason for their fatigue. Because in the same championship of England or Spain, footballers play (!!!) the ball, and in our championship they "fight" for this ball. And not just in the national championship. Our footballers start fighting from a very early age, winning or not in children's and youth competitions. In fact, they are very good at playing football, having the appropriate natural skills and technical abilities. But on the football field, they are not required to play, but to fight! If you don't fight, if you don't crash into your opponent with a run, if you don't trip him up, if you don't grab him with your hands, if you don't step on his feet with your spikes, someone else will fight instead of you! That's the whole secret! Running and wrestling, which are inherent in our version of football, take much more energy than playing a ball. That's why our players don't need two days to recover like their foreign counterparts.

What's interesting is that it's impossible to fix this situation in principle. Because not only the coaches of today's players, but also the coaches of these coaches, and even earlier the coaches of the coaches of today's coaches, were not playing football, but were fighting. It's always been like that with us! Because our footballers have never, neither a hundred years ago, when the communist government created "demonstration teams of masters", nor now, when these teams are called "professional football clubs", played for spectators, did not create a spectacle. Their success, and therefore money and everything else, depended solely on the result, for which they have been fighting with each other for a hundred years instead of playing football. And some exceptions in the person of particularly talented footballers who have been with us at different times and tried to play football only confirm this rule.

Mykola Neseniuk