Treble chance for Ukraine

By Igor Linnyk

With the national team having confirmed their place at the top of FIFA World Cup Group 2 with a 2-0 win in Albania last week, Ukrainian football fans are looking ahead to another feast in this week's UEFA Cup with no fewer than three of the country's sides still having designs on the trophy.

Unprecedented achievement
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, FC Dynamo Kyiv have reached the quarter-finals and semi-finals of the UEFA Champions League, but three teams surviving in European competition beyond the Christmas break is a truly unprecedented achievement for a nation of 48 million people.

Club successes
With 1975 European Footballer of the Year Oleh Blokhin having given Ukraine a six-point lead at the top of Group 2, it is now the turn of Dynamo, FC Shakhtar Donetsk and FC Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk to prove that the country can also compete at club level.

Villarreal await
Dynamo, the best known of the trio and a team which won the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup in 1974/75 and 1985/86, face a tough challenge as they take on last year's semi-finalists, Villarreal CF, having finished third in UEFA Champions League Group B.

Quiet season
The blue and whites have been reasonably restrained during the transfer window, signing cup-tied 23-year-old FC Dinamo Bucuresti defender Cristian Irimia and 18-year-old FC Volyn Lutsk midfield player Oleh Herasyumyuk. The squad have also been weakened by the departure of the experienced Andriy Husin while Serhiy Fedorov and Tiberiu Ghioane are both sidelined with injuries.

Brazilian investment
Dynamo's arch-rivals Shakhtar, who finished third in Champions League Group F, have had a very different winter, having spent €20m on new signings including Brazilians Ivan, Jadson, Elano Blumer and most recently Fernandinho, although the latter will not move to Ukraine until the summer. "We have taken [FC] Barcelona and AC Milan's example and have bought the best players from the last season in Brazil," explained coach Mircea Lucescu.

Schalke test
The Shakhtar players, new and old, will face a supremely tough home tie against German title hopefuls FC Schalke 04 on Wednesday.On the same night, Dnipro travel to Belgrade for the first leg of their tie against FK Partizan.

Homegrown strategy
The homegrown strategy is central to the success of Dnipro coach Eugeni Kucherevskiy who believes that the ability to communicate effectively with his players is paramount. The only foreigner on the club books is Belarussian Siarhei Karnilenka, who joined from Dynamo during the winter along with Ruslan Bidnenko.

National benefit
Dnipro's policy has been of enormous benefit to the Ukrainian national team. Ten Dnipro players lined up alongside Andriy Shevchenko and Andriy Voronin in the Ukraine side that beat Albania, and that experience may help the club improve on last season, when they lost to Olympique de Marseille in the last 16 of the UEFA Cup.

New ruling
Such successes have perhaps been a key factor in the adoption of a new ruling that from next season will oblige every Ukrainian Premier League squad to have no more than eight foreign players on the pitch at any time during domestic fixtures.

Larger party
That policy will doubtless do no harm as Ukraine aim for the finals of the 2006 World Cup. Ten Ukrainians were in the Soviet Union squad that reached the final of the 1988 UEFA European Championship. Blokhin will be hoping that a bigger Ukrainian contingent will travel to Germany next year.