2/22/2006
Paul Miazga, Kyiv Post

It’s pathetic, really: Ukraine has finally made it to its first World Cup finals – a glorious opportunity to promote the Ukrainian squad here and abroad – and what does the team’s brain trust decide on the eve of the world’s top soccer tournament? Pull out of a friendly versus another contending team.

This isn’t just bad news for Ukrainian soccer fans; this is bad for Ukraine in general. The whole idea of such a friendly, which was to have taken place March 1 in Tehran against Iran, is to test the squad against another top team to keep it in top form. What’s more, it’s a chance for Ukraine to rally around the flag, boost international awareness of the national program, which for many years has lived in the shadow of its larger regional rival, Russia, and generate match ticket and merchandise sales, ahead of the big dance. Speaking of which, has anyone seen licensed – or for that matter any – Team Ukraine soccer gear in local stores? You haven’t; there’s none to buy. What a marketing flop!

The reason for the pullout, as given by Team Ukraine Head Coach Serhiy Blokhin this week, is that the flight to Iran would be too taxing on the team before the tournament. (For the record, Ukraine’s first game in Germany will be on June 14 in Leipzig against Spain.)

Try again, coach: many national team players, namely those playing for Dynamo Kyiv, were in the United Arab Emirates for their winter training camp (the UAE lies just across the Persian Gulf from Iran) in December. So now to send the team there would be too much? Be serious.

I have two theories on the pullout, one of which is backed by lots of talk online. The first is that the Ukrainian Football Federation and UFF President Grihoriy Surkis in particular want to avoid any losses ahead of the World Cup and thereby play up the hopes of many Ukrainian soccer fans who believe that the team can win it all. It helps that Blokhin last year boasted publicly that Ukraine will win the World Cup playing in their first finals. But for Ukraine to lose to Iran before the tournament could diminish fan hopes. Ukraine are winless in international matches (0-1-2) going back to Sept. 3, 2005.

A poll that recently appeared on the UFF website (and which, incidentally, was removed as of Feb. 20) suggested that fan hopes are strong too, with over 25 percent of more than 9,000 respondents believing that the team can win it all, and nearly 75 percent believing the team will advance past the group stage.

Even team captain Andriy Shevchenko is downplaying such hopes, saying at a press conference in mid-January that “You must set realistic targets for yourselves. Otherwise, you just put extra pressure on yourselves which doesn’t do you any good. You have to understand that [Blokhin] was joking when he said that.”

My second theory is that Blokhin doesn’t want to play any games ahead of the contest because he doesn’t have any goalkeepers left. For those who haven’t heard, not only is starting ‘keeper Oleksandr Shovkovskiy out for the next two months with a broken collarbone, but his backup Maxim Startsev has injured his groin and will be lost for at least two months as well.

So what Ukraine have are a loud-mouth coach, a leadership comprised of old hard-line ex-Communists, a team with no goalkeepers and a captain who understands the reality of the coming months. I hope the fans don’t bet the farm on Team Ukraine’s chances.