It’s been exactly 10 years since one of our most authoritative specialists Mykola Pavlov ended his coaching career. He shared with UA—Football about the most memorable period in his biography.
Mykola Pavlov— Which of the matches you conducted as head coach come to mind first?
— Undoubtedly, it was the match in the final of the 2008/2009 Ukrainian Cup "Vorskla" — "Shakhtar". The team I led from Poltava triumphed 1:0 over the "miners", who had returned shortly before from another final — the UEFA Cup, in which they won this trophy by beating "Werder". The emotions that were felt after the final whistle on the field and in the "Vorskla" locker room will never be forgotten — it’s a national cup!
— And in the championship?
— First of all, I recall the victory with the same score of 1:0 of my "Dnipro" over Kyiv’s "Dynamo" in a home match of the 1992/1993 season. At that time, the Dnipropetrovsk team was battling the Dynamo players for the championship, and our Meteor stadium had never hosted so many spectators (officially, the match was viewed by 40,000 fans — ed.). Even since the times of the Soviet Union, when we played in 1983 against Moscow’s "Spartak" in a decisive match for the gold! Back then, the club found sponsors who paid for all the tickets, and entrance for the game against "Dynamo" was free. People were seated not just in the aisles between sectors and on trees, but in unclear places. The game was marked by extraordinary stubbornness, with "Dnipro" achieving the desired thanks to a goal by Yuriy Maximov.
— It is remembered that the teams you led often defeated our giants…
— The two aforementioned matches stand alone compared to all the others I conducted as a coach. And then, of course, there are victories over "Dynamo" and "Shakhtar". After the famous match of "Dnipro" with the Dynamo players in Dnipropetrovsk, there were several during my time in Poltava. In the 2008/2009 season, "Vorskla" celebrated a victory in a home game against "Shakhtar" — 1:0, and in the 2010/2011 season, we beat "Dynamo" — 3:1. In the same championship, we managed to win in Kharkiv against a very strong "Metalist". I don’t remember exactly what the score was. It seems, 3:2. Good games were also during my first term in Mariupol when "Metallurg" sometimes managed to take points from both giants by playing draws.
Vyacheslav Kulchytskyi
