Renowned journalist Mykola Nesenyuk shared his memories of the history of Ukrainian football amid the scandalous situation surrounding the match of the 18th round of the Ukrainian championship between Oleksandriya and Shakhtar Donetsk (0:0). As a reminder, the home side's midfielder Ivan Kalyuzhnyi took part in the match, but was not listed for his team at the time, and now the Oleksandriya club faces a technical defeat.
Nikolay Nesenyuk"The first scandal about a player who had no right to play for one of the teams in the Ukrainian championship occurred and then did not occur more than thirty years ago.
But first, let me remind you what those times were. The Internet did not exist. Television broadcasts of matches were rare. Only a technical recording of the game was made with a single VHS camera. The result of a game could be heard (or not heard) only in sports news broadcasts on republican radio or television. If you didn't have time for the news, you had to wait for the Sportivna Gazeta or the Ukrainian Football weekly, which provided all the match reports from all leagues and had tens of thousands of subscribers. There were also no post-match press conferences. I remember dictating technical results (the so-called "compote") and brief reports on matches held in Rivne to colleagues from other cities over the phone.
As a result, there were plenty of scandals. The main one was the scandal with the determination of the champion - the decision on who would be the first in case of a tie between the two teams was made on the fly a few rounds before the end of the competition. But the main scandal remained a secret that only a few people know about now - after all, thirty years have passed. I knew it too, but I had forgotten the details. Now I remember.
The second championship of independent Ukraine (at that time it had to be emphasised), which took place from the summer of 1992 to the summer of 1993, involved 16 teams. Before the last thirtieth round, as many as seven teams were in contention for relegation from the top flight. As a result, the last two places went to Luhansk's Zorya and Rivne's Veres. But they didn't go anywhere - after the championship ended, the football federation (there was no "professional football league" or "premier league" at the time) decided to... expand the top division from sixteen to eighteen teams.
In Rivne, everyone thought that this was the work of Valerii Korotkov, who did not know where to spend the unexpected big money and financed Veres. I made inquiries. I was told that Korotkov had no such money. And in general, our football federation is not for sale!
The reason for the unexpected desire to expand the top league was the same thing that Ukrainian football fans have been talking about for the last week - a player who had no right to play for one of the teams played in one of the matches. The person who "dug it up" appealed to the federation to count the team that violated the regulations as a defeat. And it would have been right! But then the entire standings would have to be rewritten. And no one wanted that! Of course, except for those who were "eliminated". The news of the "wrong match" instantly spread throughout the football community without any Internet, which was common in those days. So, in order not to offend anyone and avoid a scandal, the federation left the relegated players in the top league, and everyone was happy.
I may have made a mistake in some details, but in general, the situation looked like this. There was no one to ask questions to the federation at the time, so the scandal was hushed up and the "wrong" player was forgotten. Perhaps someone can add more details to my memories. I would be grateful. In the meantime, compare the situation thirty years ago with the current one. And draw your own conclusions. Do it yourself," Neseniuk wrote on his Facebook page.
