Mykola Neseniuk: "Sudakov and Shaparenko are our Lampard and Gerard"

The well-known journalist Mykola Nesenyuk spoke about the role of two midfielders for the Ukrainian national team, Mykola Shaparenko of Dynamo Kyiv and Heorhiy Sudakov of Shakhtar Donetsk.

"The great footballers Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard have gone down in football history forever. As leaders of their respective clubs (Chelsea and Liverpool) in the early 2000s, they both won a lot of well-deserved prizes and titles. One thing didn't work out - they never won anything with the English national team. And not because they didn't have the proper class. The problem was different - each of them, both Frankie and Stevie, were undisputed leaders who were used to leading the team. In my opinion, they could not play alongside each other. Someone had to play for England, and constantly, one of them.

But in the national team it was impossible - a coach who did not put one of them in the team would have been eaten alive in England. Therefore, both of them were always interfering with each other, not strengthening, but weakening the team's play.

We see approximately the same thing in our national team now - Georgy Sudakov, who was appointed leader of Shakhtar a few years ago, has not yet become the leader of the national team. Neither has Mykola Shaparenko, the leader of Dynamo Kyiv. I am not going to compare them with the great Englishmen of the past - it is a thankless task. Different time, different country, different football.

In all other respects, the situation is similar - either the game of the Ukrainian national team is built around Sudakov or around Shaparenko. Together on the field, they, like the aforementioned Englishmen, often interfere with each other and, I hope, do not reveal their true potential.

I think that Serhii Rebrov knows this as well as I do, so he should make a choice and take responsibility for this choice. Why not? This is not England, and the national team coach is not in danger of being eaten alive. Well, this is, of course, in a figurative sense, as Les Podervyansky once wrote," Nesenyuk wrote on his Facebook page.