Olympic, having lost yesterday to Persha Stolytsia with an unexpected score 0:6, oddly enough, has recovered by today's game better than Phoenix has, with its two wins. The match with Valki DYSSh seemed to have exhausted the boys emotionally.
True, the start of the game testified to the opposite. Phoenix was controlling the ball, attacked, looked pretty good and tried to play as favourite. There was no habitual sparkle in the eyes of the boys, though. The team acted monotonously and too academically. Also, the moments Phoenix created ended with technical errors either in transfers or in receives.
By the middle of the first half, the game went more smoothly, and after a foul in the penalty area, a 6-meter kick was awarded to our goal. Eldar Bratchuk, who turned 13 years old today, coped perfectly well - having deflected off his hands - the ball hit the post. A minute later, though, Oleksii Plichko, whose free kick had gone amiss, redeemed by opening the scoring.
Phoenix continued to seek luck at the opponent’s goal, but the team showed stinginess in passes and low accuracy in completing the attacking sequences. On several occasions the ball seemed to have no space to go, but even with an empty net turning the pass to the back door would not work. We did not score - Olympic did. In the last minute of the half, Stanislav Volkodav brought the score to 2:0.
The second half barely began when Phoenix conceded the third goal. The coaches began to shuffle the fours, and on top of technical drawbacks now there came poor teamwork. 4 minutes later we used 5-a-side.
This somewhat revived the game in the front, the boys managed to narrow the lag to two goals, but that was our limit. Olympic, too, scored twice and in an empty net.
Andrii Ohienko's team remains an unhandy rival for Phoenix. The previous year 1:7 in the Kharkiv Championship and the major defeat in the last selection of the Ukrainian Championship, which, however, didn’t come back to Phoenix - by then the team had already secured first place in the group, prove that sure enough. In the grand scheme of things, today's lost points are not critical, too. Four teams leave the group and the chances of our team look optimistic for now. Another thing is that the boys' gameplay lacks stability. After a couple of great games Phoenix may fail the one to come. And, most likely, the team will have to drill that during the following practice.