After yesterday's match it is very hard to discuss anything. Much has already been said about the notorious "structure", about how Ruslan Rotan allegedly has a good understanding of modern soccer, about some super cool training process... All this is good. But...
Photo - uaf.uaOf course, I was shocked when in the ninetieth minute of the match Yevhen Konoplyanka ran onto the field with an easy recognizable jog.
Yes, I thought. National team captain Andriy Yarmolenko doesn`t take part in the match, saying that "there are guys who are better prepared", and here, hello, this "kid", I would say the eternal "big kid" on the field.
Now seriously. Rotanyu, perhaps, may be forgiven for being 0-2 with England, and again, the structure, and passes on the goal line, understanding and accepting the fact that the coach knows how to work with young people and prepare them for the first team and for Ukrainian soccer in general. But with one release to replace Konoplyanka, he just trampled his image. Here we have the so-called nepotism, which has already become legendary, and the desire to stuff the statistics of a dear friend, who does not always get even into the lineup of his Polish sausage team named after its main fan John Paul II...
And there is no need to cite Tymoschuk's appearance in the match against Poland at Euro 2016. At the time Tymoschuk was an honourable man, and the practice of inviting such personalities to a major tournament in order to give them a few minutes to play there is not new. Let's recall the legendary Pole Władysław Żmuda and his seven minutes in the 1986 World Cup match against Brazil (0-4).
The situation here was different. Rotan had, for instance, young talent Artem Bondarenko, a player from Shakhtar's first team. Why not him? Or not Aleksandr Pikhalenok, who obviously had the best game with Dovbik, who was already on the pitch by that time?
I'm not saying anything about the fact that 30-year-old Nikita Shevchenko and 28-year-old Denys Miroshnichenko from Rotany's other place of work - "Aleksandria" - were included in the list of 23...
In general, it seems that under the guise of some "modern methods of work," they again offer us the same tired movie with the "favorite friends" in the title role. They only changed the film. The film.
Artem ZHOLKOVSKY for Dynamo.kiev.ua
