The importance of this match for the violets is hard to overstate. It's not just a great number of points lost by the team in the Ivano-Frankivsk round. It was the Rivne team that deprived Phoenix of the first prize at the Futsal Fair this season, and then beat the Kharkivites in the first round of the Ukrainian Championship.

It was the special importance of the first two starting matches of this round - against Sports School No 4 and Lviv Energia - that made Phoenix change their traditional plans and come to Lutsk one day before the start of the round. Considering the rather difficult road, such a decision, at least judging by the results of the match with the Rivne team, fully justified itself. In the very first starting round, Phoenix looked almost the most refreshed team.

The violets started the match in the defensive style, giving the advantage to the opponent. Although the greens had an overwhelming territorial advantage at that time, the two most dangerous moments happened precisely at their goal. First, Boldyzhev brought Khodatskyi to the prime scoring area, the latter, however, did not hit the ball, missing the most advantageous moment. Then the skipper miraculously missed the unprotected by then goal, finishing off his own kick.

Eventually, it all ended in a goal scored. The standards that Phoenix had been diligently perfecting before the trip to Lutsk worked. Konkov threw in the ball from behind the sideline, Shevchenko threw himself under the blow and shot exactly into the top left corner of the goal.

The ball scored did not put the boys off their guard. We scored first in all the matches against the players of the Rivne team, while the team of Sports School No4 won twice. The situation in the field became calmer, and our team gradually took over the initiative in the game. With a sense that the game was going smoothly, and keeping in mind the extremely intense schedule of matches of the round (each team is supposed to play two games a day three days in a row), Serhii Hrytsenko and Yurii Vashchenko got a chance to vary the composition, allowing almost all the players enter the field.

The second half Phoenix began playing the attacking style. Four minutes after the start, it bore fruit. The second ball was entirely the merit of Bezruk, who detected Rybenko's inaccurate pass to Artyshevskyi at his gate and kicked the ball under the crossbar.

After this goal, the fact that Phoenix started carrying the play became quite evident. Rivne tried to recoup and the violets got more opportunities and space for counterattacks. Three minutes later, Khodatskyi led Shevchenko to the one-on-one position with Rafalskyi with a dribbling pass, and Artyom scored a brace with an accurate kick. As soon as the second hand made a turn, Yevsyukov accurately turned home Dudin's cool pass to the far post.

Without much difficulty Phoenix brought the match to a victory, having more opportunities to score than to concede. Dolhulia and Soldatenko had excellent chances, both lacking just a bit to make them work.

Thanks to this victory, our team has reduced the lag between us and Sports School Respect, tournament leader, up to three points. We also note that today's victory was the first whitewash for Phoenix in the current National Championship, which is undoubtedly the great merit of Vova Lazeba, who played the match in a confident manner.