Many football matches have been held on the green lawn of the cosiest stadium in Ukraine, Dynamo Stadium, which has been named after Valeriy Lobanovskyi since 2002. These are the championship games of the former USSR, European Cup matches, meetings of the Ukrainian Premier League. Here in its time, in the All-Union championship, the women's team "Dynamo" held its matches and gathered not one thousand spectators. By the way, the women's team, with which I visited the tournament in the USA in 1991, was revived by FC Dynamo, and it is good to see.
That's all I'm saying about the official games that took place here. But there were also some unusual matches, that's what I'll call them.
We celebrated 30 years of success
In October 1991 there was a match "Stars of Dynamo" - "Stars of Cosmos". It was dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the first "gold" of Kyiv team in the championships of the former USSR.
Despite the rainy weather, the game gathered 12 thousand spectators. Some players of that first champion's team - Jozsef Sabo, Andriy Biba - played for Dynamo. But Valeriy Lobanovsky was absent - at that time he was working in the UAE.
The opposing team included representatives of the Cosmonaut Training Centre, who were preparing for space flights. I am sure the fans remembered the match. The rivals spent the third half at a banquet in the hotel "Kiev", and there they got to know each other better.
The goalkeeper of the "Businessmen" team was worried
The match "Dynamo Veterans" - "Sokol" gathered a lot of spectators. Unfortunately, the rain interfered again. The hockey players slid on the lawn, playing in trainers, although they showed a good game. But the victory slipped away from Anatoly Bogdanov's team.
Grigory Surkis, the goalkeeper of the Businessmen team, was very worried about the goal conceded after an aiming free kick, which was taken by a Bankers player, an employee of the Aval Bank. Although, I think, such a goal could have been missed by Yevhen Rudakov. This game gathered 10 thousand spectators on Dynamo stands.
The match between the teams "Pressing", made up of journalists, and "Diplomats", which included representatives of various foreign embassies. The younger team of journalists won, although the sympathies of six thousand fans in the stands were on the side of diplomats.
The stronger sex challenged the fairer sex
And now about the match, which gathered full stands of the Dynamo stadium. It was organised by a very popular at that time newspaper "Vecherniy Kyiv", where I headed the sports department. The newspaper paid much attention to football.
The team "Journalist-88" decided to challenge the women's national team of Kyiv, the basis of which was made up of players from three teams from the capital, which successfully performed on the all-union arena.
Leading in the course of the game in the score 3:1, I, the goalkeeper of journalists, asked my defenders to deliberately break the rules in their penalty area. The referee of the match Konstantin Vikhrov awarded a penalty. Naturally, the opponents realised it. We really did not want to upset the girls, but sport is sport - there must be winners and losers in a match.
Before this match Vladimir Troshkin had several training sessions with our team. As soon as the final whistle sounded, he breathed a sigh of relief: "We didn't let them down." And with irony he added: "In a year of training from you can mould a decent team".
For this team in that match played: Igor Zaseda (APN), Dmytro Aleksandrenko and Mykola Bocek ("Sportivnaya Gazeta"), Igor Kononchuk ("Radyanska Ukraina"), Valeriy Vykhovanets ("Komsomolskoe Znamya"), Viktor Branitsky ("Kyivska Pravda"), Oleksandr Serdyuk ("Moloda Gvardiya"), Volodymyr Kardash, Serhiy Savelyi, Oleksiy Semenenko, Dmytro Panamarchuk (all - Gosteleradio), Konstantin Remizovskiy, Oleksandr Shvets ("Vecherniy Kyiv"). If someone was not named - do not be sorry.
At half-time the audience was entertained by the "team" of the Odessa miniatures theatre "Sharzh", the winner of the contest of entertainers Ilya Noyabrev. Also present at the game were Oleg Blokhin, Viktor Kolotov, Andriy Bal, Ivan Yaremchuk. Thank you to them and to all the spectators who supported all the participants of the unusual match on Sunday afternoon.
The day after the match my phone was ringing off the hook. Friends and acquaintances called. Laughing, congratulating me on the victory. Of course, it was not without teasing, caustic remarks. Like this, for example:
- Do you know what the biggest mistake journalists make?
- I wonder...
- The fact that you went on the pitch at all.
There was a lot of talk around this unusual match. But I am sure that those 15 thousand spectators who watched its twists and turns from the stands, it was memorable. After all, football is the favourite and most popular game of millions. And the spectacle on the pitch of the Dynamo stadium turned out to be a spectacle.
And let the stadiums of Ukraine have more matches not only with the participation of professionals, because football is the favourite game of Ukrainians.
Oleksandr LIPENKO for Dynamo.kiev.ua
