Famous Ukrainian TV presenter and commentator Ihor Tsyhanyk expressed his opinion on the election of Andriy Shevchenko as UAF president.
Ігор Циганик. Фото: 1plus1.ua"Shevchenko must restore confidence in the UAF - with his name, his authority - this is the first thing. Secondly, I believe that he is able to be the main regulator of all the processes taking place in Ukrainian football due to his authority, his football background, and he is loved and respected by everyone.
We are living in such a difficult time that it is time to put an end to all those quarrels, shouts and quarrels. We need to sit down and negotiate, talk about common issues. I associate compromises in Ukrainian football with Shevchenko. Because there are actually many, many problems - refereeing, television wars, and all the processes that are taking place, the constant claims against each other - this is Shevchenko's work.
Thirdly, he can become a guarantor of attracting private investment that should come to Ukrainian football. Shevchenko's authority can allow people to ensure certain clear rules when investing in Ukrainian football.
The fourth is the international arena. It is very important to raise the image of Ukrainian football and Ukrainian players on the international stage. Shevchenko can be a great advertisement. He already did it when he took over the national team. The fact that we have such a large number of players in foreign clubs is a great merit of Shevchenko as a coach. I pay tribute to the clubs, but he also contributed to this. All these players who are now playing abroad, they started their career in the national team under Shevchenko.
In addition, we need to modernise the system of children's and youth football. I am not inclined to say that we have nothing, everything is broken. No, we have good players and a good system that worked. But it is already a bit outdated. The profession of children's coaching is not as popular as it should be in Ukraine to train players who we are ready to sell for big money.
The profession of a children's coach needs to be significantly raised and popularised. In addition, we have a huge number of unaccounted for children. I mean unaccounted for people who play football. There are quite a few of them and we are training very promising players at some level who, for one reason or another, end up quitting football. We could probably produce many more bright characters. I believe that this system of children's and youth football should be modernised.
We can't say now that we need to do this, that, and the result will be concrete. Compared to the previous government, I can tell you that I would refuse foreign curators who come and for some reason believe that they can teach us something. We need to concentrate directly on making sure that our staff tries to work here as efficiently as possible and educate the right managers, football coaches, and functionaries. We can't hope that a notional Rizzoli or Baranka or someone else will come and fix the situation.
We also need to try to understand the root causes of the problematic Ukrainian football. And the steps... We see the first step - he has created an assembly of regions, he will try to communicate more with the regions to understand what problems exist there. He sees the strategy, understands the first steps, the second, the third and the fourth.
Looking at how the process is going after the Congress, I realised that he has chosen a decentralisation policy. Previously, we had everything in one hand - there was a president who was responsible for everything, and other people mostly followed instructions. We see a more delegated approach from Shevchenko. We see that the national team institution is fully committed to Rebrov and he will be directly responsible for it. Now, I understand that another vice president will be responsible for the regions. This is correct. You should never be afraid to delegate authority to people you trust.
As they say, we will see. Right now, we cannot say that the team is good or bad. We haven't seen any cases yet. If we look at it this way, the lawyer, the first vice president, is probably the one whom Andriy Shevchenko trusts the most. He will control all the processes, especially in the financial aspect.
As for Sergey Rebrov, it is one thing to coach and another to organise. Time will tell. We shouldn't expect any miracles now, because we all understand that there is a war on. For example, the same institution of national teams. Many of our players have gone abroad. Some took citizenship there. It will be very difficult to keep these talented players. Of course, we may lose some results somewhere. I imagine so, maybe not. Maybe Rebrov has a different approach to professional football," Tsyganik said.
