Translated material
How to win a million
Russian-Ukrainian tournament started in Israel
The first international Channel One Cup tournament started late yesterday in Tel Aviv. The four best clubs in the post-Soviet space - two each from Russia and Ukraine - will compete for $2 million in prize money, and at the same time try to answer the eternal question of the last fifteen years, whose championship, Russian or Ukrainian, is cooler. The answer, of course, will not be exhaustive. In the end, Moscow's CSKA and Spartak are not all that Russia has, and Dynamo Kiev and Shakhtar Donetsk are still head and shoulders above the rest of Ukraine's football scene. But fans will still have a new argument in a long-standing dispute.And the winner of this “Commonwealth Mini-Cup” will have another million. Given the current budgets, the amount is not God knows what, and not all the money played will go to the participating teams - they will have to give half of the prize money earned to their federations for the development of football. But still, Russian and Ukrainian teams have never had tournaments with such a prize fund in the off-season. It is provided by the National Football Academy, whose founder Roman Abramovich was eagerly awaited by Monday morning. Previously, the owner of Chelsea could not - his “aristocrats” met with “Liverpool” yesterday in the English Championship.
In Tel Aviv, Abramovich should not only watch the Russian-Ukrainian football battle, but also meet with his old acquaintance, Israeli businessman Lev Leviev. More recently, Leviev followed in the footsteps of the Russian billionaire and bought the Hapoel Tel Aviv football club with all its debts. Before this, there were persistent rumors that Abramovich himself was interested in the possibility of acquiring Hapoel, but could not afford it due to UEFA’s ban on one person controlling two football clubs. But it seems that the owner of Chelsea, having advised Leviev to invest money in football (the amount of the transaction, according to various estimates, amounted to up to $15 million), did not lose interest in the Israeli club and even seemed to promise to help Hapoel with players, which Jose Mourinho does not need now.
In addition to Abramovich, there are other distinguished guests at the tournament. The coach of the Ukrainian national team, Oleg Blokhin, intends to evaluate the readiness of the national team players as part of the two leading clubs in the country. And the acting head coach of the Russian national team, Alexander Borodyuk, largely based on the results of what he saw at this tournament, will draw up a list of invited players for the first match of the Russian national team this year with the Brazilian team, which will take place on March 1.
In addition to the financial conditions, the tournament, all matches of which, by the way, will be held at Hapoel’s home arena Bloomfield, is also distinguished by a rather complicated drawing formula. Initially, it was planned that everything would be simple: two semi-finals (Russian and Ukrainian) and, accordingly, an international decisive match. However, Dynamo Kiev refused to meet on the football field once again a year with its only competitor for the Ukrainian champion title, Shakhtar, and everything had to be changed urgently. As a result, it was decided that Ukrainian clubs would meet only with Russian ones. The winner of the tournament will be determined by the number of points, and if they are equal, by the goal difference and the largest number of goals scored. If there is equality in these indicators, the teams will be distributed in the standings according to UEFA coefficients. Here, the UEFA Cup winner CSKA has an undeniable advantage. Next come Dynamo Kiev and Shakhtar, and Spartak closes the top four.
By the way, all four clubs will start in the Champions League next summer. In the meantime, only Shakhtar continues to compete in European tournaments this season, for which the Israeli tournament will be the last test before the February UEFA Cup matches. “It’s normal that Dynamo didn’t want to play with Shakhtar,” Shakhtar coach Mircea Lucescu commented. - I think that the greatest interest for the organizers and fans is precisely the fights between Russian and Ukrainian clubs. For us, games with such serious teams as CSKA and Spartak are very important before the UEFA Cup games.”