The winter off-season in Ukrainian football is gaining momentum. Most Premier League clubs have already gone to foreign preparatory camps, some have played their first friendlies.
Photo - fcdynamo.comThere is still not much news, including transfer news, which, as a rule, arouse a lot of interest, especially among the fans. The media fuels this interest.
Among the significant ones that took place last week, let us highlight three. Vorskla midfielder Vladlen Yurchenko transferred to Metalist 1925. "Polesie acquired Brazilian midfielder Talles Costa from Sao Paulo, the price is one million euros. And Shakhtar splurged as much as 15 million (12 plus three bonuses) for a little-known 21-year-old winger of Palmeiras Kevin.
Waiting for new quality
Kyiv Dynamo have not been very active on the transfer market so far. As many media believe, there is no need for it. The team has enough potential of young and talented performers, the ceiling for the growth of their skills is far from being revealed.
Actually, the new full-fledged head coach of the Bilo-Syni, Oleksandr Shovkovskiy, has the task to try to maximise this potential, including thanks to the almost one-month training camp in Turkey, where Dynamo left last Sunday. At the same time, the quality of the game and the team's results in the spring part of the season will be the criteria for assessing this training.
The Kyivians came out of holiday on January 12 and after the traditional medical check-up during the week were preparing at their country base in Vite-Litovska, combining running work with classes in the fitness centre and on the natural lawn carefully wrapped from frost.
"Work in the first days after a holiday is always difficult, but the mood is positive, we were bored one by one," admittedone of the younger generation, defender Christian Bilovar. As for Oleksandr Shovkovskiy's demands, he added: "We have already worked with him in the first part of the season, in four games we won four victories. Now the coaching process is changing, we are looking forward to further good work" (Fcdynamo.com, 16.01.24).
"Shovkovs'kyi tries to talk, give instructions, explain what and how to do correctly,- no less frankly told the winger Nazar Voloshyn. - I really like working with him. In individual conversations coach puts me as an example of Englishman Grilish, shows me how he acts in certain situations. Such accents help me. And overall the team has become calmer" (Sportarena.com, 20.01.24).
In total, the delegation that travelled to Turkey for the training camp included 29 players, including representatives of the youth team, 18-year-old Matvei Ponomarenko and Taras Mikhavko. The 34-year-old Dynamo star veteran Andriy Yarmolenko, who continues to recover after knee surgery, also went. According to the club doctors' forecasts, the midfielder will be able to start full-fledged trainings not earlier than in half a month, and for the time being he will be engaged in an individual programme.
"Theprocess of recovery is going normally. Every day we need to increase the pressure. I hope that the knee will not react painfully and I will be able to progress. With such injuries it is important to name a specific date of return to the field. But I hope that if everything goes according to plan, I will be ready for the other part of the training camp," Yarmolenko admitted (Football.ua, 13.01.2024).
Meanwhile, it was Yarmolenko who, according to former TV commentator Viktor Vatsko, citing his insider sources, played an important role in the fact that Chornomorets winger Maksym Bragaru should become a Dynamo player from the summer. And in this he saw already the qualities of the new sporting director of Kyiv in the foreseeable future.
"There was serious interest in Bragaru from other Ukrainian clubs, and Dynamo was not a priority option for him. However, Yarmolenko convinced Bragaru to move exactly to Dynamo. In fact, he won the battle on the market for one of the most talented attacking players in the country".
According to Vatsko, Dynamo made a very reasonable deal for this transfer, paying in advance and leaving the player at Chornomorets until the summer, thus taking into account the interests of the Odessa club. For Dynamo it is a signing for the future based on the age of the same Yarmolenko or Karavaev.
As for the Turkish training camp itself, the Kyiv team plans to hold as many as ten friendlies, including those with such important opponents as Levski (Sofia), Dynamo (Tbilisi), Pakhtakor (Tashkent), Sheriff (Tiraspol). And the first sparring is scheduled for 26 January, when Oleksandr Shovkovskiy's charges will meet with the club Balkani from Kosovo.
So, the fans of the capital grandee will not be bored in the near future - neither ordinary, nor vip. As it turned out, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba belongs to the latter, who in his interview to the TV journalist Roman Bebekh confessed his love for Dynamo.
"My love started with the match "Rapid" - "Dynamo". It was the first Dynamo match I watched. We lost and did not qualify for the Champions League. At that moment I was living with my parents in Austria, and I was somehow moved by the fact that our team lost. I started to get interested in football, and then I came back to Ukraine to watch the legendary generation. I did not miss a single match of the Champions League, I went to the stadium, after 2:0 against Real Madrid in the quarter-final I cried, groaned, beat my head. I am really alive with this, " the website Ua.tribuna.com (16.01.24) quoted fragments of the conversation.
The Ukrainian Foreign Minister honestly confesses that now he has no time to follow football live. But when he has a free minute, he can watch one or another interesting match in the recordings with pleasure, in extreme case - reviews of matches. As before, he will not name all Dynamo players up to the third squad by names, but he continues to cheer.
As for the prospects of Ukrainian football, he believes: "Now we have a chance for reosmislenia. We had a splash at the beginning of the 2000s, but then there was still a lot of Radianskoe inertia in the system of education, selection and so on. Then we completely switched to the legionaries - money began to rule football. But now there is a war - there is no more money, the quality of football has fallen dramatically.
But from the other side, I understand that now all the clubs, including Dynamo, are losing all the schools, chasing youngsters. I think that this is a chance to create a new quality of football management in crisis conditions and a new quality of Ukrainian football players" (Ua.tribuna.com, 16.01.24).
The epilogue is more interesting than the prologue
Of the 16 clubs of the Ukrainian Premier League, eleven chose Turkey as a place of winter dislocation, three more ("Kryvbas", "Polesie" and "Metalist 1925") preferred Spain, and "Rukh" went to Slovenia for a training camp. And only the clear outsider of the tournament "Minai" is preparing for the second part of the season at home - in Zakarpattya.
At the end of the autumn part of the tournament, "Minai" left 11 players, mostly the leading ones. The team seems to have come to terms with the fact that it will have to say goodbye to the elite division, and given the not too happy prospects decided to reformat the squad.
"I'll be honest, we didn't get a full holiday because there was a lot of work to do to find new players. I knew some of the players invited to watch before, I saw matches with their participation, and some of them were invited according to their performance at Wyscout. We chose those who fit my vision of football. Their previous achievements and age are not important. It is important that the players can understand my requirements and play the football that I am building," admitted Serbian coach of Zakarpattia Zeljko Ljubenovic, who replaced Vladimir Sharan at the helm of the team (Sportarena.com, 15.01.2024).
At first, the Minaj side were also planning to go to the Turkish shore, but circumstances made adjustments to the plans. But Ljubenovic's wards did not refuse the opportunity to visit Vinniki for a sparring session with Ruh. And suffered a defeat (1:3), although they conceded two goals only in the final 10 minutes.
Chernomorets managed to suffer three defeats in control matches in Turkey, which earlier than others (as early as on 9 January) started the preparatory work. With the same score (1:3) the sailors lost first to Hungarian "Ujpest", then to Kosovo "Drita". In addition, they lost to South African "Gelaxi" (0:4). However, Roman Grigorchuk's wards have a victory over Romanian Petrolul (1:0).
Meanwhile, even before the arrival of Talles Costa, the right midfielder of Swiss "Sion" Yassine Fortuné - a Frenchman, who played for the youth national teams of his country at different ages and is a pupil of "Lance" and London "Arsenal" - joined the ranks of "Polesie" on a lease with the right to buy at the end of the season.
And the acting sports director of Zhytomyr club is Volodymyr Teslya - a specialist with ten years of experience in sports management, winner of the national award "Pride of Ukraine", who with the beginning of the full-scale war joined the AFU and spent a year and a half at the front.
"My duties in the club are the whole sports part: searching for young talents, coaches for the academy, training of own players. "In its development Polissya is focusing on modern football. The next area of work - transfers, scouting, selection. The club's president's vision is to emphasise on the club's own youngsters, to develop Ukrainian youth. Theclub has ambitious plans - to play in the European Cup every season and fight for the championship," Teslya commented on his appointment (polissyafc.com, 20.01.2024).
Curiously, a few days before that, tongues were already wagging about Andriy Rusol, the sporting director of Dnipro-1, taking Teslya's place.
The author of the first goal of Ukraine's national team at the World Cup reacted very unambiguously to the spiced news: "At the moment, all my thoughts, efforts and focus are concentrated on the fulfilment of the tasks set for Dnipro-1 this season. We had quite a good autumn part of the championship, for which I am immensely grateful to the coaching staff, players and staff of the team.
But the epilogue is always more interesting than the prologue. In sport, as in life, it is very important to successfully finish the business you started. Therefore, we, as a team, still need to work together fruitfully, which we plan to do in the spring part of the season".
Dnipro Dnipro, meanwhile, following ex-coach Jovicevic, began to be financially pressed by another former team mentor Oleksandr Kucher, who filed a lawsuit with the UAF Dispute Resolution Chamber demanding repayment of three months' arrears of wages and bonuses for second place in the last championship.
"Insanely, we rozrahuyemosya with Kucher," said Vyacheslav Fridman, the commercial director of Dnipro-1. - We have already started to repay the transfer ban. I recently spoke with Krasnykoviy and told him about it. Probably, he just could not inform Kucheru. Of course, the club is always responsible to the players and the coaching staff for fulfilment of contractual obligations" (Sport-express.ua, 19.01.24).
According to Friedman, the same applies to Jovicevic. The delays arose because Dnipro-1 missed about six million euros that it could have earned due to its unsuccessful performance on the Euro arena. As for the players, they also receive their salaries two months late, but in the current military realities it is not critical. It is simply favourable for someone to make Dnipro club in an unsightly light. Who exactly, remains to be guessed.
Shevchenko's election tour
On 25 January in the Ukrainian House of Football will be held an extraordinary UAF Congress. One of the main, and by and large - the main item on the agenda of the upcoming event, will be the election of a new head of the Ukrainian Football Association.
The only candidate for the position is the domestic legend of the sport number one, Hero of Ukraine Andriy Shevchenko. The whole last week on the eve of the Congress, and the beginning of the current week, became extremely busy and responsible for the aspirant of the prestigious post.
On Tuesday, 16 January, Shevchenko visited Lviv, where he met with the heads of regional football associations of the western regions of the country (Lviv, Ternopil, Chernivtsi, Khmelnytskyi, Rivne, Ivano-Frankivsk, Volyn and Zakarpattya).
"We discussed our main task - how to develop Ukrainian football in the midst of a full-scale war and to return the confidence of Ukrainian fans to the Association. Thank you to all those who have reached the dialogue, for the joint observation. We will discuss the voiced questions, finalise the work on strategy and move forward," - said Shevchenko at the end of the meeting, held in Lviv Grand Hotel (Ua-football.com, 16.01.24).
"The meeting was closed. The moderator was the deputy secretary general of the UAF Igor Grishchenko. He was introduced to us as the future secret ary-general," Centernews.com.ua quoted one of the roundtable participants as saying. - It also reported that Shevchenko asked those present before the congress to make a list of the first priority tasks, which the future president of the UAF must solve" (16.01.24).
"I think the main purpose of the meeting was the desire ofAndrey Nikolaevichto getacquainted with the heads of regional federations, to study the situation we have, to hear about the problems in order to take it into account in the programme with which he will go to the elections. I hope he heard us", - the head of Ivano-Frankivsk association Taras Klim shared his opinion (Ua.tribuna.com, 17.01.24).
Moreover, Klim said that his association's proposals to improve the work of the UAF were submitted in writing. And they are very simple - improvement of mass football organisation on the ground, children's football, federation management, strategic issues. After all, what are the elections for? To achieve changes, to improve the work.
Two days later, a similar meeting of Shevchenko with football representatives of the regions was held in Kyiv. It was attended in particular by the head of the Association of football of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol Serhiy Kunitsyn and executive director Vitaliy Danilchenko. In addition, the working meeting was attended by the head coach of the national team of Ukraine Sergey Rebrov.
"We continue to communicate with representatives of regional associations, - commented on the results of the event Andriy Shevchenko. - We talked about international standards, work with children, digitalisation of the federation, which will create prerequisites for maximum transparency of its activities.
It is important for me to hear the vision of Ukrainian experts on the development of football during a full-scale war. After all, we must not only keep what we have, but also go forward, set high and ambitious goals" (Dynamo.kiev.ua, 18.01.24).
Finally, last Saturday Shevchenko visited Kharkiv, where in particular he had a separate conversation with the head of the regional Military Administration Oleh Sinegubov, the recently elected head of the local football association.
"Kharkiv. Unlamne misto of strong and strong people. I have a lot of good stories about it. I'm glad to be here again. It was nice to hear words of gratitude for my work as an ambassador of the United24platform .Every day in the oblasts, class C reanimobiles and medical equipment purchased thanks to United24 are being used. This has become possible due to donors' requests from all over the world and favourable work with international partners," Shevchenko said (Weukraine.tv, 20.01.24).
And as for the actual profile purpose of the trip added: "This time a separate focus - work with the temporarily occupied territories. All-round support, interaction between associations to ensure the development of regions, players, children's football in those areas that are temporarily occupied or are on the front line" (Objectiv.tv, 20.01.24).
...The UAF Congress is just days away. And there is no doubt that Ukraine deserves to have an authoritative, fair and civilly responsible functionary at the head of the national football.
Viktor ZHURAVLEV
