About the scores in the Euro zone

While the RFU is philosophizing, the football authorities of Ukraine - one of the hosts of the Euro-2012 - are acting, not sparing either their own or others' reputation

I nevertheless asked my two questions - after the press conference, on the porch of Interfax. The President of FC Metalist and the main investor in the preparation of Kharkiv for Euro 2012, Oleksandr Yaroslavsky, once again spoke about dirty tricks...

I nevertheless asked my two questions - after the press conference, on the porch of Interfax. The president of FC Metalist and the main investor in Kharkiv's preparations for Euro 2012 Oleksandr Yaroslavsky, who once again spoke about Kiev's dirty tricks towards his club (chased phrases, chopped style, like the image of a colorful businessman), was in a fighting mood.

So I asked why the defendants in the loudest football corruption scandal in recent years turned out to be the clubs of the cities hosting Euro 2012: Kharkiv and Lvov? It seems that they have nothing to argue about, they don’t need to incite each other (competing cities have already been screened out). And in general, how appropriate is this kind of disassembly in the decisive period of preparation for the European football forum? Alexander Vladilenovich did not delay with the answer:

- Ask the organizers of the case about the so-called contract, who are trying to set us up. As for Euro 2012, don't worry about it. The shadow will not fall on the final of the European Championship. The euro is above all this.

With that, Mr. Yaroslavsky left for the next meeting, of which he obviously had plenty that day in Kyiv. And I went down - from Reitarskaya to Khreshchatyk. Autumn Kyiv was delightful, its advanced patriarchal appearance did not at all encourage reflection on the paradoxes of Ukrainian reality, and not only football. I thought that in Russia such wars between provinces and capitals, and even between allies, if they are being waged, are hidden behind blank walls, and for Ukraine the state of public showdown is a common thing, almost the norm. The political climate is changing, but there is still openness to all winds - this is what I have just observed.

... I didn’t go to Kyiv for a scandal, honestly. I wanted to quietly and peacefully look at the new European football capital and Ukraine in general. Ukraine now is both the leader of the post-Soviet football space, and a testing ground for all sorts of innovations, and in a certain sense, a projection on our football realities. But somehow we are more interested in Spain or England, although a kindred country is nearby, something very similar to Russia, and in some ways ahead of us a long time ago.

We are only going to switch to the “autumn-spring” system, but they have been playing according to this formula for a long time and with varying success. Our football boss designated the victory at the 2018 World Cup as a guiding goal, and the Ukrainian team was already among the top eight at the 2006 World Cup. We are just trying to win the fight for the right to host the 2018 World Cup, and Ukraine, along with Poland, overcoming incredible hardships, hosts Euro 2012 in a year and a half (the schedule with the final on July 1 in Kiev has already been approved by the European Football Union).

Russia looks down on its neighbors a little, from the bronze pedestal of Euro 2008, showing little interest in what is happening in Ukrainian football and around it. And absolutely in vain. The experience of preparing for Euro 2012 can be extremely useful (regardless of whether Russia will host the World Cup or not), but there is other very real evidence of the very active promotion of Ukrainian football to the European and world arenas.

Every now and then there is talk about the unification of the Russian and Ukrainian championships in order to create a league that really competes with the first European five. True, there are no grounds even for holding a joint cup tournament (this is the freshest idea) - the countries went different ways and fundamentally separated themselves, Russia, with all its traditions and ambitions, is late, it is difficult to keep up with its neighbors.

And in terms of scandals, too. Everything is seething there, and very concretely, loud near-football events, oddly enough, coexist quite organically with global processes and a general rise in interest in football.

While the Russian Football Union is philosophizing about corruption in football, successfully hushing up any high-profile case, the Football Federation of Ukraine is acting. Judging by the case of Karpaty and Metalist, he acts by touch, sparing neither his own nor anyone else's reputation. What is more in this process - a political background, a sincere desire to bring football into clean waters or an elementary settling of scores, the international arbitration court in Lausanne will not figure it out. Yes, he will not particularly understand, as far as I understood during the Kyiv voyage.

... Alexander Yaroslavsky, we must give him his due, chronologically accurately outlined the sequence of events in the course of which the language brought the Karpaty to Kyiv, and then both clubs to Lausanne. The defense of the president of Metalist looked armor-piercing, but he definitely had no hopes for a successful outcome for his club in the FFU Appeals Committee, and even more so in the international arbitration court. Against not so much the facts (there are many of them in such slippery issues as fixed matches), but the general opinion.

The story is like this in general. At the disposal of the FFU President Grigory Surkis, there was a video recording of a friendly conversation (and in the form of a mild interrogation) of the honorary president of the Karpaty football club Petr Dyminskiy with the Moldavian Karpaty legionnaire, defender Sergey Laschenkov. During this conversation, Lashchenkov said that in April 2008 in Kharkov, the sports director of Metalist Yevgeny Krasnikov gave him 110 thousand dollars to ensure the success of his team, which claimed bronze medals. Having received their own, the "lads" ensured the result the Kharkiv team needed (4:0 with an own goal and sending off Lashchenkov, who, obviously, tried the hardest). The public did not suspect anything of the kind, but the match was immediately recognized as “strange”. The evidence appeared two years later, which is no less strange than the agreement that has become historical.

The high-profile case began to unwind in the spring, and at the end of the summer, based on the conclusions of the committee on ethics and fair play, the control and disciplinary committee of the Ukrainian federation issued a verdict that had no analogues in the history of post-Soviet football. Both clubs were deducted three points for the 2007/08 championship (this did not hurt the bronze of Metalist), as well as nine points each “for the future”. Sergey Lashchenkov and Yevgeny Krasnikov were excommunicated from football for life, the general director of Karpaty Igor Dedyshyn - for five years. The clubs had to pay a $25,000 fine each, and all former and current Karpaty players who allegedly received the money were to be returned in the same amount.

The leadership of Karpaty, who got involved in the story solely out of a desire to figure it out (according to his version), but in fact was going to solve their problems of terminating contracts with the same Lashchenkov and his colleague Fedoriv (according to the generally accepted version), did not expect anything like this. Most likely, "Karpaty" just wanted to scare the players, without even elementarily calculating the consequences and not assuming what such a truth-seeking could turn out to be. What is more in this - naivety or some special Transcarpathian cunning - is still unclear. The internal investigation did not bring unequivocal results, Lashchenkov, who left in the same 2008 for the Baku Olympic, managed to renounce his “testimony”, Karpaty continue to seek justice.

But this cannot be compared with the war between Kharkov and Kyiv. Yaroslavsky from the very beginning, according to him, did not even touch the ill-fated disc with the record. The head coach of the Ukrainian national team (and part-time head coach of Metalist) Myron Markevich, who led the national team at the very beginning of the investigation, left his post in the national team in protest after the decision of the FTC was published. There was also no unity in the ranks of the executive committee of the FFU - for example, the vice-president of the federation, Sergei Storozhenko, warned of the "destructive consequences" of such a decision.

And Yaroslavsky saw in all this the desire of the Surkis clan "to denigrate the reputation of Metalist and to deprive the Kharkiv club of the opportunity to rise to the podium and excommunicate from European competitions." For more than ten years, the main vector of tension in the Ukrainian Premier League has been the confrontation between the "Kyiv" and "Donetsk", that is, the federal and oligarchic projects, Dynamo and Shakhtar, but Metalist, after four bronze years, clearly claimed more. Whether there were serious reasons for this or not is a moot point, but there is no smoke without fire.

The key point in the "defense of Yaroslavsky" was the indisputable fact that the prosecutor's office conducting the investigation did not find corpus delicti due to the absence of an event. These conclusions were shelved by the executive committee of the federation and completely ignored, which gave the determined businessman a reason to declare war on behalf of the club "with an independent position and immunity to corruption schemes." This, too, given the controversial reputation of Metalist (as well as some other Ukrainian clubs), is a moot point, but Alexander Vladilenovich will not get through with such things. Although it is Yaroslavl, it is mainly Kharkov and city-forming.

The Ukrainian FTC, which is headed by the famous former football player Stefan Reshko, also had its own position, fully supported by the independent observer from UEFA Andreas Kuhn: the prosecutor's office is the prosecutor's office, but the football organization has the right to rely on its conclusions based on general evidence. There is a reason - law enforcement agencies around the world in the rarest cases manage to figure out the manifestations of football corruption, and the authorities in the post-Soviet space have never been able to do this at all.

Be that as it may, the Ukrainian FTC showed independence and adherence to principles, but its decisions had no legal basis - from the point of view of the law, the football authorities of Ukraine acted subjectively, and according to the defendants, primarily Kharkiv, with a specific purpose. The football community, as usual, was divided, which I had the opportunity to observe directly in Kyiv. UEFA does not comment on the scandal in any way, but the organization is clearly impressed by the attempt to fight for the purity of football, albeit in a somewhat grotesque form.

The punishment until the decision of the FFU Appeal Committee (and complaints were filed by both clubs) has been postponed for the time being, in the standings the defendants follow the leaders as a sweet couple, the meeting that determined their fate was to be held on October 5, but there is no news from Kiev yet. Further, most likely, there will be a trial in Lausanne, from which there will be no good news for Karpaty, who started all this mess, and for the “innocently injured” Metalist.

But if Oleksandr Yaroslavsky convinced me that a phantasmagoric story will not harm the image of Euro 2012 in the Ukrainian version (and even vice versa), then for the sake of a common cause one can suffer.

And I hope to go to Kharkov and Lvov for another reason. Yes, I was going to Kyiv in a different way ...