Former Dynamo Kyiv goalkeeper Volodymyr Tsytykin commented on the news that the Ukraine U-19 national team will play a friendly tournament in Seoul without a single Shakhtar Donetsk representative in its squad.
Vladimir Tsitkin- According to media reports, Shakhtar did not release their players to the Ukrainian youth national team for a friendly tournament due to their busy schedule. However, Oleg Kuznetsov says that the players simply did not have time to get to the national team after the UEFA Youth League match. What do you think about this?
- If they wanted to let them go, they would have solved everything. I think Kuznetsov just doesn't want to escalate the situation and go against Shakhtar. He depends on these players, and the Donetsk club has the highest quality youngsters now.
I think Shakhtar really did not let the players go, but I understand them here. The tournament in South Korea is very illogical: it's a long way to travel there, there's a big time difference and the sparring partners are not of a very high level. And it's not given by UEFA. In this situation, I understand Shakhtar's coaches.
- Is there any way to deal with this, perhaps with the help of the UAF?
- I see the solution only in mutually beneficial cooperation. The national team can give young players good practice at the international level, which they do not have in clubs.
How do I see a way out of the situation? We have crossed paths with the US national team several times. The Americans had an entire team made up of players from different clubs. It turns out they have a very good system. The national team has its own academy, where they gather four age groups of players and train them together. It turns out that the players, although they belong to clubs, are trained in one place.
Ukraine needs to learn from the experience of training young footballers in the United States. There, like in Germany, there are regional selection centres. We once wanted to set one up in Ukraine, but everything died down because no one needed it.
- Should Shakhtar call up the Donetsk team for the next matches after such an act, or should they go with the principle?
- And who will be worse off? While the German national team can call up 40 players for a training camp and play two matches with different squads, we don't have such a large number of quality players. It is possible not to call Shakhtar players, but it will be a shot in the foot.
Andriy Piskun
