By Stefan Korshak Jun 13, 2006, 17:39 GMT
Leipzig/Potsdam - Ukrainian football tactics are quite old- school. Even for the most important of matches, there are two basic tactics a coach can select: The 'first number', and the 'second number.'
Coach Oleg Blokhin will almost certainly select the 'second number' - defensive tactics aimed at scoring by counterattack - for Ukraine's opening World Cup match against Spain.
The problem is, whatever plan Blokhin adopts will have to work against against a technically superior Spanish side.
'We have no pretensions to superiority over the Spaniards on the technical level, that is not the way with us,' Blokhin told a press conference Tuesday. 'We will build our game on the Ukrainian strength, and that strength is collectivism.'
Blokhin's focus is on group play, and the use of physical fitness to compensate for sometimes player inferiority on the technical level.
Blokhin - and decades of Soviet coaches - call the most desirably characteristic in a team 'collectivism': players able to team up to gain control of the ball, and to execute attacks in fast groups before the opposition's defence is set.
During its World Cup qualifying campaign, Ukraine visibly departed from a 'collectivist' defensive stance only once - against Turkey during the last game in the two-year series, and that only for a single half.
Using its tried-and-true methods, Ukraine was the first European country to qualify for the finals in Germany.
Besides, Ukrainian sports specialists point out, Blokhin has a counterattack weapon par excellence in Andrij Shevchenko, one of the world's fastest and most cold-blooded strikers.
Add in the Ukrainian side's lack of top-level creativity in the midfield and the inexperience of some defenders, and the only possible Ukrainian solution to a superior side like Spain is 'build a fortress around our goal, press the Spaniards in our half, and then get Shevchenko loose and give him a long ball - anything else is suicide,' said Oleh Rudinsky, a reporter for the respected Sports Express newspaper.
Unfortunately for the admittedly fleet-footed Ukrainians, continuous pressing and fast raids into opposition territory require fitness, and there are problems on that front for the East Europeans.
The team itself, built on the physically-oriented Dynamo Kyiv side, in itself is capable of running.
But Ukraine is a cool country and temperatures in Germany - hovering in the 30s - are some 10 degrees hotter.
Then there is Shevchenko, with a leg just finished recovering from injury, but not back to full match fitness.
A very difficult decision facing Blokhin is how to field Shevchenko - from the start, at the half, or perhaps not at all. True, even the opposition is saying Shevchenko should be on the field.
'Even if he is not fully fit, we must consider Shevchenko extremely dangerous,' said Raul, Spain's team captain.
'I think of the temperatures, and I wonder if I have the right to ask Shevchenko to play in this heat,' Blokhin said.
Another tough one for Blokhin is which attacking midfielder to back Shevchenko: Germany-based Andrij Voronin, a national team veteran but with little club playing time in recent months; or Ukraine-based Serhy Rebrov, who has had a stunning club season this season and and was Shevchenko's tandem-man in his youth, but has had little experience on Blokhin's side.
A similar difficult choice faces Blokhin on the left wing, where Ruslan Rotan - a gifted Dynamo Kyiv winger with a precocious ability to predict play, but little international experience - competes with Maxim Kalinichenko, a solid midfielder less capable of defensive mistakes than Rotan.
'I'll make the decisions,' Blokhin said. 'But they won't all be easy.'
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