SPORTSLINE
SOCCER
Both Ukraine's play and other teams' match results suggest that it has a very good chance to qualify for the 1998 World Cup out of the very tough Group 9.
The Kyiv side's defeat of Northern Ireland in August shocked nobody, as the teams were evenly matched, but on October 5, 1996, the yellow-and-blues scored a stunning upset of Portugal at home in the Ukrainian capital.
The partisan crowd of 50,000 went into a delirium at only four minutes into the contest when Serhii Popov headed in the opening marker after a weak clearance by the opposing keeper. The Ukrainians showed complete mastery in the match, narrowly missing a golden opportunity to go ahead by two at the 61st minute.
Then Luis Figo countered for the Portuguese 83 minutes into the match, only seven from the end. This did not deflate the Ukrainian side as it has in the past, and they didn't settle for a single point. They kept pressing and, five minutes later, Yurii Maksymov (a Kyiv Dynamo midfielder) sealed his side's 2-1.
On November 9, 1996, Portugal reasserted itself with a 1-0 victory over Ukraine in Porto. That day, however, was not all bad news, as the Northern Irish held Germany to a 1-1 tie in a game in Nuremberg hosted by the Teutons.
The Ukrainian position got even better on December 14, 1996, when Portugal and Germany played to a 0-0 draw in Lisbon. Portugal has taken the lead in the group, but Ukraine has a game in hand, and the national team's next encounter will be on March 29, an away match in Tirana against a weak Albanian side.
As of December 26, 1996, the Group 9 standings are:
| Team | GP | W | T | L | Goals | Pts |
| Portugal | 5 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 5-2 | 8 |
| Ukraine | 3 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 3-2 | 6 |
| Germany | 3 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 6-2 | 5 |
| N. Ireland | 4 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 4-3 | 4 |
| Armenia | 4 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 3-7 | 3 |
| Albania | 3 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 1-6 | 1 |
Ukraine's 1997 schedule looks like this: April 30 in Germany; May 7 in Kyiv, vs. Armenia; June 7 at home vs. Germany; August 20 at home vs. Albania; October 11 in Yerevan vs. Armenia.
Websites
Pavel Karimov maintains a very well organized and nicely illustrated site, at http://muddcs.cs.hmc.edu/~pkarimov/index.html, which is billed as a Kyiv Dynamo "unofficial site" but is much more.
For comprehensive although less visually appealing listings visit the "Ukrainian Football (Soccer)" website (http://pantheon.cis.yale.edu/~mychola/f-ua.html). It includes spirited commentary by traveling "ubolivalnyky" (fans, in Ukrainian) such as Taras Ciurak (e-mail address: [email protected]), a history of Ukrainian football (an edited version of which appeared in The Ukrainian Weekly during the 1994 World Cup) and more.
The http://www.litech.lviv.ua/~jareky/ jsoccer.html site contains a wealth of information, particularly on past national team, league and club stats, but is rather slow and cumbersome. On the other hand, reports about recent games in international play are more clearly presented and attributed.
Indoor
From November 24 to December 8, 1996, FIFA (soccer's international governing body) held the World Indoor Soccer Championship, known as FUTSAL (a contraction for Futbol Sala) in Spain. Ukraine made it to the semifinals after two stages of round-robin play, and Oleksander Moskaliuk was second in goal scoring (with 10), alone among a raft of high-powered Brazilians dominating the top five.
On December 6, 1996, Ukraine lost the semifinal to Spain 4-1. Two days later Ukraine lost 3-2 to Russia in the third-place game, thus finished off the podium.
Given that contests are held in hockey-rink-like arena, many games were won by a hockeyish, if not handballish score. The championship game was no exception, won 6-4 by Brazil over Spain. Happily, no fights broke out.
FIGURE SKATING
The winter season brought back the world's bladers to a wide variety of rinks around the world, and while some of the hype surrounding figure skating appears to be cooling off, Ukraine's amateurs remain competitive.
At the NHK Trophy competition held at Kadoma, Japan, on December 5-8, Dmytro Dmytrenko took third place behind Canada's Elvis Stojko (the winner) and Russian Illia Kulik. Also at the NHK, Ukrainian pair Irina Romanova and Ihor Yaroshenko took the bronze in ice dance behind two French tandems.
Oksana's tribulations
On the professional circuit, Oksana Baiul's three-inch growth spurt and ongoing back problems seem to have seriously impaired her ability to land a jump. In the early going at the Auburn Hills, Mich., Ladies' Professional Figure Skating Championship in November 1996, Ms. Baiul's dramatic "Colors of the Night" routine even garnered a perfect 6.0 for artistic impression from one judge.
However, the technical program, for which Ms. Baiul performed her "Arabian" routine (easily as artistic and even more visually compelling) proved her undoing. She attempted a triple loop, triple salchow and a double axel, but unfortunately had problems with all of them, falling on the first. Her technical and artistic marks ranged from 5.4s to 5.8s and were not high enough to qualify her into the final. As the marks were read out, coach Halyna Zmiyevska grimly sat beside Ms. Baiul, while her charge tossed her shock of shoulder-length blonde hair and made goofy faces at the camera.
All the while, Ms. Baiul remains a marquee name on the circuit, and always draws sympathetic murmurs from television commentators. The December 22, 1996, CBS broadcasts of the event included Christmas and New Year's bilingual greetings from a besweatered former world and Olympic champion - in English and, distressingly, in Russian.
Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, January 12, 1997, No. 2, Vol. LXV
| Home Page |