At the end of February, the Academy of Dynamo Kyiv tried a new practice - the coaches of the Ukrainian national team of the same age group, led by Yuriy Moroz, worked with the graduating group of players born in 2007 (U17 age group) for a week. Oleksandr Ishchenko, the director of the Dynamo Children's and Youth Sports School named after V. Lobanovsky, told us more about the idea of this innovation.
- This is, so to speak, a pilot project. We came up with an initiative to have the coaches of the youth national teams, in particular the U17 team of players born in 2007, led by Yuriy Moroz, work with club teams of the same age for a certain period of time.
In a conversation with the head coach of the national team of Ukraine Serhii Rebrov, which took place about a month and a half ago, I drew attention to the fact that the national team coaches, having played matches in September, did nothing for the next five months - they only watched and watched the players. And why not make sure that during this period, when national team coaches are not in practice, they take part in the training process and work directly with the players of the clubs that supply the largest number of players to the national teams?
So we did just that on the example of the U17 national team. Having previously agreed on this issue, we invited Yuriy Moroz to conduct a training session with Dynamo's team of boys born in 2007 before the matches of the elite qualifying round for Euro 2024, which will take place in March, to see in practice what players he has at his disposal. After all, Dynamo is one of the national team's base teams of this age, which supplies a large number of players. Other teams with a large representation of players in the national team, such as Rukh or Shakhtar, can do the same.
This idea is already being practically implemented in Ukraine. Yuriy Moroz, along with Volodymyr Ikonnikov, who works with him, train with Dynamo U-17 at Nyvky for a weekly cycle. It is going on this week and ends on Sunday, 25 February. Yuriy Leontyevych and I are also planning to attend the match between Dynamo's youth team and Metalist 1925, which will take place on Sunday at the training arena in Koncha Zaspa. I think he will benefit from what he sees during the training sessions, as well as the information he will receive about potential candidates for the national team.
- Do the national team coaches train independently or together with Dynamo coaches?
- Together with the coaches of our Children's and Youth Sports School. But it is Yurii Moroz who schedules the training sessions, and our coaches Yurii Dmytrulin and Taras Lutsenko help him. After this week's cycle, I'm sure the national team coaches will share their impressions and we will sum up the results together. But I can already see that this experience is very useful, it is an example of how to organise the practical work of national team coaches in the period between qualifying matches.