Lviv school wins prestigious Leather Ball finals
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
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A school from Lviv triumphed at this year's Leather Ball competition as they emerged from regional qualification to become victors of the eight-team national finals in Kyiv.
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The annual Leather Ball competition for children in Ukraine is one of the leading football tournaments in eastern Europe and this year's event kept up that tradition as Lviv secondary school No73 took the honours.
Organised by the Amateur Football Association of Ukraine (AFAU) with the help of the Football Federation of Ukraine (FFU), the competition was awarded the gold medal in the best grassroots project category of the UEFA Grassroots Day Awards for 2010. The finals of the 2011 event were staged at the Viktor Bannikov national training complex in Kyiv in September, with the participating teams comprising the eight winners of the regional qualifying groups.
Lviv beat Oleksandriia Collegium 3-1 in the overall final, with Sergii Valenko scoring twice, while the Volodymyr-Volynskii boarding school got the better of Konotop secondary school No5, 1-0, in the third-place play-off.
After the tournament every competitor was awarded prizes, including balls and vouchers for football boots, courtesy of the FFU, the AFAU, Cocа-Cola and the Leather Ball club, which was represented by its president, former USSR and FC Dynamo Kyiv player Andriy Biba. The best youth teams were also presented with cups and medals. All the winners have been invited to Ukraine's friendly against Germany at the newly renovated Olympic Stadium in Kyiv on 11 November.
