The Kharkiv City Futsal Championship is turning into a major pain in the neck for Phoenix. Instead of a solid basis for preparing for the Championship of Ukraine, the City Premiership has turned to a nearly major hassle for the club.
Phoenix managed to have only two matches out of six on the parquet, having given away its training time in the sportsground of Kharkiv National University of Pharmacy. Due to the quarantine restrictions and absolute indifference they show in Kharkiv to the preparation of futsal children and youth teams the futsal championship is being held on the open sites. Good indoor sports grounds are quite scarce and all of them are taken by commercial tournaments. They happened to find no spot available for the main city tournament.
Today’s round turned into a farce altogether. The sleet of yesterday left the streets covered with ice.
The open sites in the Gorky Park turned into skating rinks, making the coaches of the participating teams wonder whether they should go for a forfeit defeat or potential traumas of their players.
The horrible state of the sites puzzled Phoenix’ coaching staff. 7 days before the team’s departure to Ivano Frankivsk for the second round of the Championship of Ukraine the team’s fallen short of a number of players: Maksym Dolhulia, Danylo Boldyshev and Ivan Konkov. Danylo Dudin and Mykhailo Soldatenko are playing with micro-traumas. Not to worsen the team’s serious staffing issues, the first best decision was not to go into the field at all. Then it was decided to go for it, setting up the boys so that they are as cautious as possible and avoid injuries.
To be honest, we saw very little of the actual team of Sports School Valki 2006 this Sunday. The game and the tally were brought about by the wandering celebrities, the backbone of which formed the players of UFC Metal born in 2005 and of Arsenal, aided by the Valki’s team older players: Anatolii Naku, Danylo Syrotenko and Artem Novosel.
We will not cover the motives of Valkovite’s head coach. Arsenal’s players are most probably summoned to reinforce the Valkovite’s U15 team, which is about to enter the First League of the National Futsal Championship. The participation of UFK Metal players, whose age makes them ineligible for the coming national premiership, is more difficult to explain. Well, the lack of the Statute, anyways, makes it possible for anyone to register anyone for whatever comes handy.
The match revealed UFC Metal’s full advantage. The opposition took this advantage to a quite comfortable 4:0 in the first half. It is hard to analyze Phoenix’ play in the match. Due to objective reasons the team could not play the common combination futsal with overlaps and frequent position shifts: the ice hampered fast relocation. The game itself was as simple as it could get. The ‘legionaries’ of the Valki team were playing soccer, they are so accustomed to, which we are not ready to counter out of the same objective reasons.
It was not only the tally and the absolute futility of the happening that spoilt the game, but two bluntly rude episodes initiated by the opposition in the situations when the score was big and the tally obvious. The rudeness resulted in two red cards – awarded to Oleksandr Nikolenko and Artem Novosel.
After the match Phoenix congratulated the coaching staff of UFK Metal on occasion of the victory. To UFK Metal’s coaches the participation of their team in today’s match was an absolute surprise. Phoenix thanked its players for having played up to the set goals for the match, wished the Valkovites luck at the Championship of Ukraine and decided to never again play ice futsal.