The well-known journalist Mykola Nesenyuk spoke about the circumstances in which Shakhtar Donetsk won their championship this season.
Mykola Neseniuk"I believe the reason for Shakhtar's early title as Ukrainian football champion was the change in the atmosphere in our football that occurred at the end of this winter. Before that, everything was different - the teams were fighting for victory in every match, losing and gaining points, the leaders were replacing each other at the top of the standings. And then something happened. A certain wind suddenly blew in our football and everything changed - one team won fourteen matches in a row this year and won the championship title ahead of schedule!
At first, I thought it was just my imagination, that the unexpected defeat of Oleksandriya in the game against Shakhtar, which ended in a draw, was an accident, a kind of "excess of the performer" who suddenly forgot to put one piece of paper in the right place or press the right computer key in time.
But the very next game cleared everything up. As soon as Kryvbas dared to equalise with Shakhtar, the referee allowed Shakhtar to score a dastardly goal while a teammate was "dying" on the pitch, screaming for help, which caused Kryvbas to stop playing. I wonder what Zubkov, who was "dying", and Kryskiv, who was scoring against the confused opponents, will tell their children? Will they be ashamed of this episode, or will they say: "Learn, boys!"? Let me remind you that the referee not only scored that goal, but also sent off Kryvbas' central midfielder. Just in case.
So when, in Shakhtar's game against Zorya, the referee sent off the latter's central defender in the first half and handed out so many yellow cards to the opposition players that half of the first team could not play in the next game against the same Shakhtar, I was no longer surprised. I was sure that if Shakhtar failed to score the game-winner, the referee would "find" a way to award an eleven-metre penalty and they would take it as many times as necessary to score. And the story of Chornomorets, whose managers, out of the blue, claimed that it was more convenient for them to play their home match against Shakhtar in Kyiv rather than Odesa, looked like a bad and not funny joke.
Why am I not writing about the decisive match between the leaders in Lviv? Because first of all, I should mention how the changed football atmosphere affected Dynamo, who suddenly had a strong headwind against them. Because writing about the Shakhtar-Dynamo game without mentioning how the referee invented an eleven-yard penalty against Kyiv in the 97th minute of the game against Veres, forgetting about Voloshyn's pulled-from-the-finger sending-off against Oleksandriya, the provocation with Tymchyk's sending-off against Dnipro and other less notable episodes somehow doesn't work. Because the Ukrainian football winds were clearly showing everyone that Shakhtar would not be allowed to lose and Dynamo would not be allowed to win.
I'll start by saying that all the players and coaches of both teams, without exception, were well aware of this before the game in Lviv. How can the fight be equal when the players of one team are afraid to make an extra sharp move in order not to get a penalty, a penalty, a warning or a sending off, and the players of the other team know that they will never get anything and just have to calmly wait for the "winning" eleven-metre penalty? Oh, where are my sixteen years, when before a game of the youth teams, referee Mykhailo Mylyatin whispered in my ear: "Kolya, run into the penalty area and fall down!" But I still had to run into that penalty area...
But back to Lviv and the state of the teams before the game. In my personal opinion, the current Dynamo and Shakhtar are roughly equal in terms of the level of players - most of these guys have played together in the youth national teams and have not yet caused scouts from foreign clubs to want to pay a lot of millions for them. No fables about the "hundred-millionaire" Sudakov. Similarly, we shouldn't pay attention to the herd of young Brazilians brought to Shakhtar, who were afraid to play against Dynamo. Perhaps, in order not to explain later why they paid such a fabulous amount of money by these standards.
Therefore, the game was supposed to be interesting with equal chances for both teams. But was it really possible in the current atmosphere in our football? Yes, Dynamo did not impress. The team still has to grow and grow, learn and learn. But how can you teach them to press their hands to their bodies in a hundredth of a second while a full-force shot is flying at you from a distance of two metres? It is much easier to learn to see the "hand play" through a microscope and award the long-awaited pre-ordered (crossed out) quite fair eleven-yarder. Do you remember what else Shakhtar created at Dynamo's goal in the championship match besides this eleven-yarder? Remember? That's it!
Logically, I would then have to say that in order to win in Lviv, Dynamo would have to be a head stronger than Shakhtar. But I won't write that. Because I'm sure we don't need a championship where one team is a head stronger than the others. Because a championship where one team wins absolutely all the matches is only possible where, like here, there is a special football atmosphere and everything depends on where the football wind blows.
I almost forgot. The corridors of the completely neglected part of the ground floor of Lviv Arena are full of dirt and dust. You can even step into dog shit. Would you at least clean it up?" Neseniuk wrote on his Facebook page.
