Phoenix falls into the Rivne trap again. All the short history of our matchups against Sports School No.4 resembles a pendulum: we exchange victories in every tournament. But if the teams played against each other twice at the Futsal Fair and the Championship of Ukraine during last season, there will be no chances for a rematch in the swift-paced Super Cup. Thus the defeat today looks especially painful.
Phoenix failed the beginning of the game completely. Pretty much the first attack of Sports School No.4 ended by a medium-range strike and the ball dived treacherously between the legs of Eldar Bratchuk. A swift goal discouraged the violets so much, that several minutes later the team let in another goal for the second time after the goalkeeper had failed to bring the ball into play properly. Phoenix coaches reacted with a one-minute break, after which Volodymyr Lazeba took his place in the goal, and Artem Shevchenko went out to play as pivot in the first four-players squad.
By the middle of the period Phoenix managed to equalize the game, and even spent the end of the period attacking. An excellent solo effort by Maksym Dolhulia finished with a long-range shot, and after the follow-up strike the ball went over the goal. After a dangerous shot by Nikita Bodnar, defender of Sports School No.4, kicked the ball out from the goal line. Conversion of moments was far from perfect, and the teams went for a break with a score 0:2 that wasn’t in our favor.
The second period was started by Phoenix pressing. The team from Rovno gave up the initiative as they were completely satisfied with the score on board. Organized attacks of the violets often ended with shots on goal, but our players either lacked precision in the final stage, or the opponents were rescued by the dedicated play of defending players and the goalkeeper.
Vladyslav Shvets struck aside a shot from Artem Shevchenko, Danylo Khodatskyi and Oleksander Bezruk failed to use good opportunities, Mykyta Bodnar didn’t manage to shoot past the row of defenders legs after the free kick. Counterattacks became the main weapon of the team from Rovno. During one of them Konkov failed at his flank, Lazeba and Khodatskyi acted discordantly at the follow-up, and the score became 0:3. Being ahead of their opponents both by the overall number of shots and by the shots on target, Phoenix was losing heavily and the ball stubbornly missed the opponents’ goal as if enchanted.
After trying to score desperately with equal squads, the violets switched to playing with a five-players squad. Vladyslav Shvets turned aside the shot into upper V from Demyd Yevsiukov, and the defender stopped a promising pass from Nikita Bodnar to Maksym Dolhulia who was standing all alone. Danylo Boldyzhev who put on a shirtfront managed to implement the numerical advantage by making a billiard-precise long-range shot. But suspense that was only starting to emerge vanished in the very next attack: Nazar Artishevskyi ran away from Artem Shevchenko and converted his one-on-one run into goal.
The remaining few minutes passed with our team attacking, whereas the most dangerous attack was marked by Danylo Boldyzhev shot into the crossbar. Despite desire to score and dedication, there was lack of discipline and composure in decision-making that prevented goal scoring. Two times more till the final whistle Roman Poddubnyi and Nazar Artishevskyi managed to hit the empty goal of the violets, taking the score to inappropriate.
After the first match day our team is last in the tournament table of the Super Cup. It is tomorrow when we need to get out of the “basement” in the match against one of the main favorites of the tournament, Chorne More from Odessa. Although the boys are not in the best of moods, they have experience of getting out of such situations. At the very least let us remember the victory against Sports School No.25 from Kyiv in the last year playoff of the Championship of Ukraine after the games that had been lost the day before to Krystal and Chorne More from Odessa. We’ll see as soon as tomorrow whether the boys will be capable of repeating their feat. The game starts at 19:00.