With victory in quarterfinals, Kyiv Dynamo ready to go all the way (03/21/99)

With victory in quarterfinals, Kyiv Dynamo ready to go all the way

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - Prior to the March-April madness that evokes emotions in European soccer comparable to the NCAA tournament in the States, Head Coach Valerii Lobanovsky of Dynamo Kyiv said that this year his team is geared to go all the way.

"We want to win the Champions League. This is our intention. There is nothing more to say," said Mr. Lobanovsky in December 1998, after Dynamo Kyiv had qualified for its second consecutive European Champions League Tournament.

That goal is now within reach. On March 17, by defeating Real Madrid 2-0, Spain's national champions - who also took last year's European crown - the Kyiv soccer club took a major step toward fulfilling Coach Lobanovsky's dream.

Fans of Dynamo Kyiv, who give true meaning to the word derived from "fanatic," feel no need to wait. Many already have dubbed the Ukrainian soccer machine "European champions."

"We have been the best for a long time. Only our political situation did not allow us to show our capabilities," said soccer fan Viktor Pavliuk, a 32-year-old banker, who then uncovered a blue-yellow Ukrainian flag and screamed to no one in particular, "Kyiv."

At least a few thousand others had the same feeling hours before Dynamo reached the European championship semi-finals, the furthest it has gone since Ukraine became an independent country. Last year the team had reached the quarterfinals, only to suffer a convincing defeat at the hands of Italy's Juventus club.

Chants of "Kyiv, Kyiv," along with the incessant blaring of small, hand-held horns, echoed on the city streets near the stadium hours before the game that fans believed would be the toughest challenge for the yet-uncrowned kings of European soccer. There also were flags wherever you looked - dark blue and yellow, light blue and gold, small ones held by individual and large canopies held aloft by groups.

A group of Dynamo soccer zealots, who gathered a half mile away from the stadium as is their custom before important matches, performed what can only be called a ritual, of some sort. "Let us drink the blood of the Spaniards. Then victory will be ours," said a 20-somethinger, who identified himself only as Aliosha.

Having solemnly listened to this pronouncement, his eight compadres swilled from a bottle of red cranberry vodka.

The crowd of nearly 100,000, nearly all of the male persuasion, finally managed to squeeze itself through the turnstiles and into the stadium minutes before the match between the two soccer power houses began.

Then, however, all the excitement and expectation was dulled quickly by a Kyiv team that could not get a handle on the ball or, it seemed, the desire to play the game.

Only goalkeeper Oleksander Shovkovsky kept Dynamo in the match during the first half with two sure-handed stops of shots by a Madrid team that was hell-bent on attacking - in the first half anyway.

Dynamo played as if the 28-degree temperature at game time had slowed their blood into molasses.

But, after their first half of navel gazing, Dynamo emerged as if with a flame beneath their derrieres. Suddenly, they realized they had legs.

Andriy Shevchenko, whose slim frame and gazelle-like stride has become a synonym for Ukrainian soccer - and who some say may get $30 million dollars for his services with another team in the European league next year - seemed like a toddler who had lost his parents at a carnival during the first half of this match. After the break he finally carved out his avenue along the left side of the field and slammed home the first goal on a rebound at the 16-minute mark of the second half.

His handiwork energized his teammates and now Dynamo became the attacker, with touch-toe passing and quick strikes deep into enemy territory. The sluggishness was gone. Tentativeness became sure-footedness.

With 10 minutes still left on referee Anders Frisk's watch, Serhii Rebrov, considered the next hottest item on the European soccer market after Shevchenko, delicately returned a pass to his surging fellow soon-to-be millionaire in a classic give-and-go. With Shevchenko's move to the goal it was all but over.

The players on the field were not the only show in town this night, because the Ukrainian fans, who came from all regions of the country, put on a spectacle equal to what they witnessed in Kyiv's Republican Stadium.

Theirs, however, was not a slow-to-develop contest. It started early, and held its energy to the end.

At 2 p.m. scalpers were near the stadium, searching for suckers to pay double and triple the 30-hrv price of sold tickets.

Fans with beer in mind, and, of course, soccer as well, gathered in smaller and larger groups to analyze every aspect of the upcoming match and to prognosticate its outcome.

One young Kyivan, so enthused with the event that he had been near the stadium since 10 a.m., said he had counted 110 buses that had arrived from the regions.

The honking of horns, the faces painted in blue and yellow, the Russian-language chants of "Ukraine forever," and "Kyiv rules," were sufficient proof of what Hryhorii Surkis, owner of the Dynamo Kyiv club and a national deputy of the Social Democratic Party (United) in Ukraine's Parliament called "the best international public relations campaign about Ukraine that exists."

A car with Crimean license plates, covered with road dirt probably as a result of the 12-hour trip from Ukraine's autonomous republic to the capital, was plastered with slogans in support of the Dynamo team. "Sevastopol is for Kyiv, today," read one.

The car's owner explained that he had taken the day off by calling in sick the previous day and had left his home town in the morning to be in Kyiv for the game. After Dynamo had won, as he explained, he was immediately returning home and would be at work in the morning.

The Ukrainian government soccer "mafia," led by Mr. Surkis, a member of Ukraine's Parliament, and his business partner, Viktor Medvedchuk, today the Parliament's second vice-chairman, along with Prime Minister Valerii Pustovoitenko, and former President Leonid Kravchuk were joined for the game by the country's current head of state, Leonid Kuchma. (National Deputy Yevhen Marchuk was a no-show.)

Ukraine's government television station captured Mr. Kuchma pacing back and forth, deep in thought, during the dismal first half. It's not clear what was on his mind: the presidential election, or the disordered state of the Dynamo attack.

Ukraine now goes to the semifinals against either Manchester United of England, Bayern Munich of Germany or Juventus of Italy, all champions of their national leagues. On March 19 (as this paper went to press) they were to draw for opponents. Then, in three weeks the semifinals are to begin.

To an extent, Dynamo Kyiv has been disregarded on the sports pages of European soccer, but today it is a force that must be reckoned with. Western Europeans are coming to realize that Ukraine may just win it all this year.

Rob Hughes, chief sports writer for The Times of London said as much on March 3 on the pages of the International Herald Tribune. "Kyiv Dynamo has, without doubt, the ability to win the trophy," said the respected sports commentator.

Dynamo Coach Lobanovsky could only agree.

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