The UAF Congress, held on 25 January, defined the prospects for the development of Ukrainian football in the coming years. As a matter of fact, from that day began the countdown to the implementation of plans and tasks facing the new management team of the national association headed by Andriy Shevchenko.
Speaking at the forum with a policy statement, the non-alternative candidate for the post outlined quite specifically the range of problems that have arisen in the work of the UAF: distrust in the organisation because of non-transparent activities, weak sponsorship base, claims to the institute of football arbitration, lack of introduction of modern technologies, as well as a unified pyramid of national teams, and methods of training young players.
And these, as Andriy Shevchenko stressed, are only the key problems. To solve them and for the UAF to enter a new stage of development, he proposed nine concrete steps.
"I realise how great the responsibility is on me now. We are facing very big tasks. First of all, to do everything to make football in Ukraine grow. Developed in such very important conditions, when there is a full-scale war. We must do everything to fulfil these tasks. All aspects are very important" (Suspilne.media/sport, 25.01.24).
It is clear that it would be unwise to grab everything at once - the work to be done is hard, painstaking and, most likely, time-consuming. And the first step of the new UAF headquarters was the optimisation of the management apparatus, which had been bloated by the previous management. Now the president of the association has only three deputies. The number of members of the executive committee has also been drastically reduced.
At the same time, at the suggestion of Andriy Shevchenko, a new structural unit - Assembly of Regions - will be created in the UAF.
"The Assembly of Regions is going to become a platform for communication of regional associations and the UAF and will prepare for further approval by the viscountry committee proposals on issues related to the development of football in the regions", - Shevchenko stressed (Uaf.ua, 30.01.24).
Last Tuesday, 30 January, in the capital's House of Football held a meeting of the working group of the new formation, which, in addition to the head of the association, was attended by the first vice-president of the UAF Pavlo Boychuk, vice-president Oleksandr Shevchenko, Secretary General Igor Hryshchenko, as well as representatives of regional federations.
"During the discussion the participants of the meeting made their proposals on the functioning of the Assembly, listened to the thoughts of the representatives of the regions on the management model and formed a working group to create a regulation on this new working body of the UAF.
The regulation will be sent to all participants for approval, after which it will be reviewed by the UAF Viscom. Therefore, the first meeting of the new body will be held in accordance with the approved Regulations, at which the leadership will be returned and the activity of the Assembly of Regions will be started (Uaf.ua, 30.01.24).
There, in the House of Football, Andriy Shevchenko met with the President of the NOC of Ukraine Vadym Guttsayt and Acting Minister of Youth and Sports Matvei Bedny. The main attention during the conversation was paid to the organisation of training camps and matches of Ukrainian national football teams in 2024, in particular - preparation for the Olympics, which will be held in Paris in the summer.
Andriy Shevchenko also visited the leading YouTube channel "Bombardir" TV journalist Roman Bebeh, whose answers to questions partially quenched the information thirst of many colleagues and ordinary football fans, as they were replicated by a number of websites.
Responding to Bebech's question, what moved him to run for the position of UAF president, Andriy Shevchenko admitted: "I seriously thought about the possibility of becoming a football functionary a few months ago. It was a difficult decision. I realise what challenges and responsibility I have in front of me. But the time has come to move forward and the decision has been made. I see what we can do to help the development of Ukrainian football. This motivates me" (Fanday.net, 31.01.24).
At the same time, the legendary footballer and successful coach does not hide the fact that even after the beginning of the full-scale war had more than one offer to lead this or that team as a coach. However, he preferred other priorities.
"On the second day after the beginning of aggression I made a decision for myself - I will help my country, where I was born, where my relatives and friends are. Since that time I am close to Ukraine. The first months - I made TV appearances, travelled to partner countries to highlight the problems, the perception of the war that the Ukrainian people feel.
Then I became the ambassador of the United24 platform, a number of important projects were implemented to support Ukraine, including a charity match in London. All this work was carried out for two years, and now it is important for me to make my contribution to the development of Ukrainian football" (Ua.tribuna.com, 01.02.24).
At the same time, Shevchenko made it clear that he is not going to curtail his humanitarian mission: "We must deliver our truth, no one will do it for us. If you talk to Italians now, for example, they have little information about the war. We are the ones who have missiles flying every day, people dying. So if we don't seek contact, they will forget about us. We must do everything to be heard, to defend our point of view" (Sport.ua, 31.01.24).
Returning to domestic football issues, Andriy Shevchenko noted that if now to make the right changes in the organisation of domestic football, it is possible not only to stabilize the decline that is happening, but also to make steps that will help it to develop. After all, football should not just survive, but move forward.
That is why it is important to make the association transparent, to restore confidence in it, to bring sponsors, patrons, to make international partners believe that in Ukrainian football can and should be invested.
The newly elected president of the UAF paid special attention to the development of children's and youth football, the formation of a full-fledged institute of national teams. As for the latter, he is confident that Sergei Rebrov is on the right track and will cope with the tasks set before him. As for the children, he added that it is necessary to develop a methodology of training. When to develop technique, when to emphasise physical exertion, when to focus on the result.
Shevchenko is also concerned about the outflow of talented young people, who because of the war went abroad and continue to play football in clubs there, and some of them have already managed to get passports of the host countries. In this context, the head of the domestic association cited the example of Croatia, which experienced a similar experience in the 1990s.
"Croatia had a very good system of scouts, who worked in Australia, the United States, Spain. My Milan team-mate Zvonimir Boban told me about it. We knew young talents and immediately established contact with their fathers. Even the national team players learnt to do this. So will we talk to our boys. And if the same Mudryk will know that there is a talented Ukrainian in the Chelsea academy, who lives in England, I think he will do everything to get him to the national team in case of need" (Ukrfootball.ua, 31.01.24).
As for the relationship with the coach of the national team of Ukraine, and now also vice-president of the UAF Serhiy Rebrov, here Andriy Shevchenko was as frank as possible: "We have enough experience of relations. I know him from his youth, I know how he works. He knows my character. I am very grateful to him for the fact that he came to the national team, became the head coach. It was one of the main reasons for me to return and work as the president of the Association.
We have people with experience, very good specialists, but Rebrov has experience of working abroad, he has his own understanding of football. He is very good at communicating with players as a manager - that's what we call him. Because he is not only a manager, a coach is a manager who can build a vertical, knows how it works, and who grants people near him, who will help him in this. And for me our relations are very important for me to come to UAF" (Ua.tribuna.com, 01.02.24).
Creation of the vertical of the national teams, attention to youth teams, youth football in general, seems to become one of the priorities in the work of the new management staff of the UAF, which was expressed by both the president of the association Andriy Shevchenko and the head coach of the national team Serhiy Rebrov.
The new UAF general secretary Igor Grishchenko confirmed the transformation in the system of functioning of the national teams of different ages: "One of the vice-presidents of the Association became Sergiy Rebrov, who from the moment of signing the contract as the head coach of the national team has already started to vibudovuvate this vertical.
Now he has received the official status and the opportunity to do it in a new capacity. We really need to implement the vertical of national teams, the institution of national teams, starting with the U-15, U-16 and ending with first national team" (Tribuna.com, 30.01.24).
Serhiy Rebrov himself regarding the return of the Ukrainian U-21 Championship, which was cancelled in 2021, in particular noted: "I believe we will return this tournament, and it is not only my position. Such competitions are very important for the institution of the national team as a whole, for the transition age of players, because after the U-19 we are losing a lot of players. We will talk to the clubs and solve the problem.
Tribuna.com decided to play ahead of the curve and conducted a kind of survey of UPL clubs to find out who adheres to what position. And here is the picture: only four clubs - Dynamo, Kryvbas, Oleksandriya and Vorskla - were unequivocally "in favour" of resuming the Ukrainian U-21 Championship.
"We support the idea of resuming the tournament, moreover FC Dynamo was and is one of the initiators of its resumption. In our opinion, it is very necessary for the development of Ukrainian football, because there is a huge distance between the U-19 tournament and the senior championship. A lot of players, who are physically or psychologically not ready to play at the senior level, simply spoilt. And this has a negative impact on the selection of the national teams", - explained the position of the president of the capital grand club Igor Surkis (30.01.24).
Similar arguments are used by the general director of "Kryvbas" Volodymyr Baenko, vice-president of "Vorskla" Oleh Lysak, head coach of "Alexandria" Ruslan Rotan.
The latter, for example, noted: "Sergiy Rebrov is absolutely right to say that we are ruining a lot of young talents, because in Ukrainian football there is no additional difference between the U-19 and the base team. Young footballers simply do not mature. So, insanely, there are talents who have proved themselves well at a fairly young age. But most of the youngsters are so-called "late footballers". So, they need some time to open their potential and to declare themselves a little later.
And Volodymyr Baenko added: "We will definitely support Serhiy Rebrov. We are for the development of Ukrainian football, for the development of young Ukrainian players. Taking into account the circumstances, we even proposed to make the U-19 tournament for the first and second year not mandatory by the regulations, but at the will of the clubs. And if such a championship will be competitive, a lot of interesting performers will appear".
There were other opinions. For "Veres", for example, according to its president Ivan Nadein, this topic is not relevant at the moment, because the club has just started to build its academy and does not have enough players of this age.
"Metalist 1925" supports the initiative, but, as general director Andriy Nedelin noted, is a club that is forced to be based outside the place of registration, and therefore has infrastructural and organisational problems.
Infrastructural issues, lack of enough players. Infrastructure issues, lack of sufficient number of players. And "Rukh", for example, has declared the second team, in which it tries out youngsters and is quite satisfied with it, to the second league. It is not excluded that "Polesie" and LNZ will go the same way. At the same time, the main global problem for the majority is financing, which in the conditions of a full-scale war raises doubts about the need for additional costs.
In short, with all the obvious arguments in favour of the resumption of the U-21 championship there are objective and quite real difficulties in bringing the idea to life. And the new UAF leadership faces a difficult task to bring the whole knot of problems into a single whole in order to make the right decision.
At the same time, Sergei Rebrov's desire to systematise the principles of training young footballers in the country, to form a unified organisational and methodological structure for the functioning of national teams of different ages cannot but cause respect.
Vyacheslav Grozny, a well-known Ukrainian coach and expert, expressed a curious opinion on this matter: "Serhiy Rebrov, apart from managing the national team, has taken on an additional function, an additional burden. He is practically trying to revive what was under Lobanovs'kyi - the vertical of the national team. Gravtsy youth and youth teams must work on the same system of training with the main team of the country" (Komandaonline.com, 02.02.24).
According to Grozny, Rebrov thus ventured on a very serious step and, in fact, took responsibility for the preparation and performance of teams of all ages. At the same time, without intermediaries, relying on his vision of solving the problem and the vision of his associates, recommending the coaches of these national teams, replacing an entire UAF committee.
"Zvіsno, first of all, everyone is interested in the results of the national team. But it is necessary to look at the entire vertical. Even before long, those who are now in the U-17 national team can be recruited to the main team. A system is being created for the years ahead, which can and must give Ukrainian football a boost", - summarised Vyacheslav Grozny.
Undoubtedly, the entire Ukrainian football community expects a reset from the new leadership of the UAF. A reset in the organisation of affairs and responsibility for them, in the principles of functioning of the Association's divisions and their regional branches, finally, a reset in the mind and understanding that football is a whole layer of modern life. And perhaps even more so in the conditions in which our country finds itself due to military aggression.
At the forefront of these expectations are not only coaches and players, functionaries and experts, fans and mere observers, but also a whole army of sports journalists - reporters, observers, commentators.
Here is a representative of the portal Ua.tribuna.com Darina Kalinchuk asked her colleagues in the media for their opinion on expectations in connection with the election of Andriy Shevchenko as the new head of the UAF.
"I will be banal, but I expect the implementation of the programme that Shevchenko presented at the congress. Starting from the point, which he wrote down as vision. Because the Ukrainian Football Association has been doing something for the last few years, but we do not know what it is. No one knows what vice-presidents did, what the president was doing, what moves were made, what decisions were made. For me it has always been a great mystery, as for everyone", - said commentator Vitaliy Volochay (01.02.24).
Volochay believes that in the House of Football it is necessary to clean out the stables, to clean the association from people who have been parasitising football for a long time, doing nothing and receiving huge salaries. Therefore, a full independent audit is a very important step. Andriy Shevchenko will find it difficult to make any changes until he understands where the money went, where it was buried, what flows were going on.
"I like it very much that we now have no 45 vice-presidents, or how many there were. I like the fact that non-football people come to the staff immediately at the entrance. I think it is absolutely right decision to hire professional lawyers or financiers, and not to teach law and economics to football people.
And as a journalist Vital Volochai hopes that the UAF will finally start working with the media, because before it was not working with the press, but the personal PR-service of the resigned management.
"First of all, I would like Andriy Mikolayovich to forget that he is a legend of football ," admits journalist Mikhail Spivakovsky. - Whathe was involved in is a different kind of sport. Besides, he came to the post without any experience as a functionary. None of us will forgive him for his dilettantism, bias and bias only because of what he used to do on the football field. Now in front of our eyes a bunch of fresh examples, when greed and attachment idols of our childhood completely darkened what we wanted, when they played football".
"Shevchenko must return confidence to the UAF - by his name, authority, he must become the main regulator of all processes that take place in Ukrainian football, - adds TV presenter Igor Cyganyk. - We have such a difficult time that it is time to end the fights, shouting, welding. It is time to sit down and talk to each other, to talk about common topics. Because there are really a lot of problems - judicial and TV wars, constant claims one to one. Seeking compromisein I'm very much connected with Shevchenko".
Also Cyganyk is sure that Shevchenko can become a guarantor of attracting private investment, which should come to Ukrainian football. The authority of the new head of the UAF can provide investors with clear rules of the game. And also in his power to play an important role in improving the image of domestic football and Ukrainian players in the international arena.
In addition, the TV presenter believes that we need to modernise the system of children's and youth football, to raise the prestige and popularise the profession of children's coach. Plus bring order to the accounting of those involved in football. Because we lose many promising kids at some stage, including because of the imperfection of the competition system.
"I would refuse foreign supervisors who come here and somehow think that they can teach us everything. We need to concentrate on making our staff try to work as efficiently as possible, and cultivate such managers, coaches and functionaries. We should not expect that a smart Riztsol or Baranka will come and fix the situation.
Judging by the first steps, Cyganyk believes that Shevchenko will seek to decentralise the UAF. The institute of national teams is completely at the disposal of Serhiy Rebrov. And the creation of the Assembly of Regions obviously implies that it will be supervised by another vice-president, as familiar as possible with the situation on the ground. If earlier in the regions they just followed the instructions from above, now it is noticeable that the head of the association wants to delegate authority.
"I think it is necessary to understand the time and circumstances in which we live now. Everything depends on how, first of all, the events at the front will develop, and our whole life is based on it. So to talk about some kind of cosmic development of football, as far as I am concerned, is very important.
But at the same time, we must make the right timing for this industry to begin to develop after the end of the war. This foundation must be laid now. And in order to put it in place, we need to sort out at what stage we are at", - summarised TV journalist Roman Bebeh.
Obviously, this is the meaning of the expectations of the football community from the new UAF president and his team.
Meanwhile, the winter off-season is in full swing in Ukrainian football. Most UPL clubs continue to prepare for the second part of the championship of the country, which will resume in less than a month, at foreign training camps. And eleven representatives of the elite division chose Turkey as the place of their dislocation.
The head coach of the national team of Ukraine Serhiy Rebrov also went there. He visited the training camps of Dynamo, Dnipro-1, Shakhtar, Veres and LNZ, as well as attended some control matches.
"It is interesting for me to watch the preparation of our teams in this important period, - said the mentor of the blue and yellow. - The second round will put everyone in their places in the standings. Information about the players is also important for me on the eve of the Euro-2024 play-offs in March, for which we will prepare thoroughly" (Ua.tribuna.com, 01.02.24).
One of the main suppliers of players to the national team, Dynamo Kyiv held three friendlies last week. In two of them they lost (to Polish Legia - 1:3 and Bulgarian Levski - 0:1), and confidently won against Pakhtakor from Tashkent (5:1).
Of course, Kyiv fans will not like the defeats of their favourites at all, but, on the other hand, it should be understood that the results of friendlies during the preparatory period are of secondary importance, taking into account that they are held against the background of planned loads and constant rotation of the squad.
Moreover, Oleksandr Shovkovskiy actively involves in the games not only 18-year-olds Matvei Ponomarenko and Taras Mikhavko, who were sent to the training camp together with the main team, but also other youngsters, who train under Igor Kostyuk's wing.
Thus, in the match against Kosovo "Balkani" Andriy Matkevich took the field. In the game against Legia, Dmitriy Kremchanin had the opportunity to get experience of adult football. Against "Pakhtakor" Alexey Gusev played on the right flank of the defence. And in the game with Levski, along with Gusev, 17-year-old Kirill Pashko also found playing time.
By the way, other teams, positioning themselves as contenders for the championship gold medals, also lose in friendlies. "Shakhtar, for example, lost to Czech Hradec Králové (0:2) and Bosnian Mostar (2:3), Dnipro 1 to Polish Rakuv (1:4), and Kryvbas to another Czech club, Viktoria from Pilsen (0:3).
Nevertheless, Kryvorizhzh coach Yuriy Vernidub continues to believe in his team and does not hide his ambitious plans: "Every coach dreams about the championship, and I am not the exception. Kryvbas" has a good chance and we should try to fight. But we will see how it will be, we will see in the next game. But I really want my team to look even better in the second part of the championship than in the first. Each round for us will be championship" (Ukrfootball.ua, 30.01.24).
"Kryvbas" is preparing for the spring part of the season in Spain, there, in the Pyrenees, is based and "Polesie", which has its own ambitions. Zhytomyrians won against local Murcia (2:1) and drew with Polish Steel (1:1).
The last match was watched by Sergei Rebrov's national team assistant Vicente Gomez and Ukrainian youth team coach Unai Melgosa. "It is important for us to watch football players, especially during such an important period of the season - during their preparation. We have three teams here - Polissya, Kryvbas and Metalist 1925, and therefore we plan our line-up so as to watch as many matches with their participation as possible. We are always looking for new names", - said Vicente Gomez (Polissyafc.com, 29.01.24).
The sparring with "Steel" became doubly responsible for Zhytomyrians also because the president of "Polesya" Gennadiy Butkevich and world boxing champion Oleksandr Usik, who was preparing for a unification fight with the Briton Tyson Fury, came to the match.
"Z'yavlyasya free hvilina, otchey i came to the boys, to support them, - said the famous boxer. - For me it is like a ladle of fresh air, because for the fourth month I have been staying in a closed camp in the training camp. I liked the game, in the second half we started to press, we could score an overtime goal. And in general I think that "Polissya" will be able to fight for a place in European cups and even for the championship".
"Metalist 1925" did not voice its European Cup plans for the current season, but in the future it clearly intends to become another serious force in Ukrainian football. At least, this is evidenced by the invitation of experienced Viktor Skrypnyk to the position of head coach, as well as the signing of a number of quality performers.
A very high-profile transfer of Kharkiv team was the invitation of Denis Garmash, an experienced midfielder, who played almost all his football life for Dynamo Kyiv, who did not work out in Croatian Osijek.
"I did not have many options, - honestly admitted the midfielder, who played 31 matches for the national team of Ukraine. - When I learnt that Viktor Skrypnyk could join Metalist 1925, I telephoned him and we had a chat. I will be very interested to work with this coach. I am ready to give my all on the pitch, so that the team could achieve the desired result and get as high as possible in the league table" (Metalist1925.com, 30.01.24).
He also promised not to celebrate a goal, if he manages to score against Dynamo Kyiv.
The base day of the start of the second part of the Ukrainian championship is 24 February. And it is in the 18th round that Kharkiv team will meet Oleksandr Shovkovskiy's wards.
Viktor ZhURAVLEV