Phoenix's apology to the fans for yesterday’s major defeat in the match with DYSSh-5, was an extremely challenging game against Olympic-UFK - the leader of the qualifying group 'B' in the Futsal Championship of Ukraine. To boys' credit, they coped with their task perfectly well!
The meet itself turned out to be beautiful, fast-paced and intricate - the type of game the coatches of both teams had been aiming to build into their trainees. Since both Phoenix and Olympic have already secured the places in the the Championship finals, there was no pressure of the result, and the guys played for fun, showing the audience futsal of excellent quality.
Serhii Hrytsenko and Yuri Vashchenko surprised the counterparts with unexpected tactics - Phoenix played defense first. This decision was easy to explain - in a month's time, the 'violets' will find themselves in play-offs against the top teams of the Ukrainian Futsal Championship, competing with players who are a year or two their senior. So, discipline and order in defense will come to the fore.
The boys showed genuine responsibly and clarity in their defense, letting the opponent outplay themselves in the number of shots on goal, but not in the number of shots on target.
It was very important not be the first to miss, however, it was Phoenix who did. Still, unlike yesterday's match, this failure did not knock the team out of the rut. Both fours intensified the pressure, showed great counterattacks and quickly switched from defense to attack. The accuracy of passes, compared with the match lost yesterday, has increased significantly, and this was evident to a naked eye. The diagonals, which made it possible for Phoenix to quickly and efficiently draw the game away from their own goal area and create dangerous moments at the net of the opposition, were especially delightful.
Maxim Dolhulia, who missed the match due to a red card, was replaced by Daniil Dudin, who had served his disqualification. It was Daniil's shot, just two minutes after Phoenix's missed goal, which restored the balance in the score and, at the same time, reassured the teammates.
Our guys started putting more pressure on opponent’s goal, feeling that they are on the right track. Two minutes later Phoenix got an excellent opportunity to take the lead. For a foul in their own penalty area, Olympic was punished with a kick “from the point”, but Vanya Konkov missed.
This failure did not bother the boys at all, and they were rewarded for their perseverance. In the 14th minute, Misha Soldatenko scored off a cool back door pass.
Three seconds before the end of the first half, Olympic was awarded a 10-meter free kick, but, fortunately, Oleksii Plichko struck inaccurately. In the second half, only Phoenix scored. Once again, Daniil Dudin, Artem Shevchenko and Sasha Bezruk brought the match to a comfortable victory - 5:1. And a huge merit in this result goes to Eldar Bratchuk, who has reliably and almost flawlessly played between the sticks.
With this victory, Phoenix not only secured itself a place in the finals - no lower than the third- but also retained the theoretical chances to finish higher in the standings. True, not everything depends solely on us.