Euro-Highs and lows for Ukraine coach Blokhin

Oleg Blokhin is Ukraine’s most
famous coach, credited with leading them to their finest
achievement to date, a place in the quarter-finals of the 2006
World Cup but now the pressure is on to do even better than
that.

A blisteringly fast forward and prolific striker, Blokhin
was one of the best players in the history of the Soviet Union,
playing through the 1970s and most of the 1980s for Dynamo Kyiv.

He became the Soviet national championship’s leading scorer
with 211 goals, as well as making more appearances than any
other player with 432 appearances.

He was also one of only five players from the old communist
era to be named European Footballer of the Year, an award he won
with Kyiv in 1975.

After retiring as a player in the 1990s, the blunt and
sometimes even rude Blokhin coached several Greek clubs whose
fans nicknamed him “the Tsar”.

Blokhin’s status allows him to talk down to even the most
famous players in the national team such as former Milan and
Chelsea attacker Andriy Shevchenko, who enjoys iconic status in
Ukraine.

“Names do not play football,” Blokhin told Reuters in an
interview. “…If they did, I could be playing now.”

In 2003, Blokhin started his first stint as the head coach
of the newly independent Ukraine’s national team.

Three years later, the team reached the World Cup
quarter-finals by beating Saudi Arabia and Tunisia in the group
stage and then Switzerland in playoff. They lost to eventual
champions Italy.

In 2007, Ukraine failed to qualify for the 2008 European
championship and Blokhin resigned after sharp criticism from
fans and the media. He then spent a few years coaching a
Russian, and then a Ukrainian, club with little success.

Ukraine’s football federation re-hired Blokhin in April 2011
in a last-minute attempt to mould a more competitive national
team. As co-hosts, they felt they needed a tougher edge.

Although Blokhin describes himself as a perfectionist, he
says pressure to win the championship at home may affect the
team’s performance.

“We did not have such a task during the (2006) World Cup,”
he said.

On the other hand, he says, confidence is important.

“One must believe. We, too, did not think at some point we
could defeat Bayern,” Blokhin said, referring to the 1975
European Super Cup final when his club Dynamo Kyiv beat Bayern
Munich in a two-leg match in which he was the only scorer.

Blokhin said he rarely watched recordings of his own
matches, but showed the goals against Bayern, where he was
opposed by another former European Footballer of the Year,
defender Franz Beckenbauer, to foreign players, at one of his
clubs, to assert his authority.

It remains to be seen, however, if his leading-by-example
approach and occasional profanities will be enough of a
motivation for the Ukraine team, who have had little time to
practice in their current lineup.