Yevhen Kucherevskyi: Saluting one of the three kings of Ukrainian football

Jonathan Wilson / Jonathan Wilson / 08 October 2009 / Leave a Comment

Current Ukraine coach Oleksiy Mykhailychenko is disciple of legendary manager Valeriy Lobanovskyi

"It may not be a name that is especially familiar outside Ukraine, but to locals Yevhen Kucherevskyi represented the soul of football, Dnipro's part of the holy trinity of Ukrainian coaches of the eighties and nineties."

On the eve of England's World Cup qualifier in Ukraine, Jonathan Wilson looks back on the life of one of the greatest managers the country has ever produced

On Saturday, as England fans in Dnipropetrovsk make their way to the city's fine new stadium for the World Cup qualifier against Ukraine (where the home side are [2.78] to win; England [2.64]), they will pass along Kucherevskyi Boulevard.

It may not be a name that is especially familiar outside Ukraine, but to locals Yevhen Kucherevskyi represented the soul of football, their part of the holy trinity of Ukrainian coaches of the eighties and nineties. In Kyiv, there was Valeriy Lobanovskyi who led Dynamo and the USSR to such heights; in Donetsk there was Viktor Prokopenko, who became the first coach of an independent Ukraine. And in Dnipropetrovsk there was Kucherevskyi, fighting always against the odds with Dnipro.

On the eve of the 1988 season, Dnipro lost their two best players, Hennadiy Lytovchenko and Oleh Protasov, to Dynamo. Kucherevskyi said: "To be honest, I didn't think the team would challenge for the title that season.

"During pre-season I said to the players: 'I know that some of you were dissatisfied that all the newspapers wrote about Litovshenko and Protasov, but now they have gone, and you must prove that you are worthy of praise.' It was only two nails missing from a whole bench."

It was only as autumn drew in and Dnipro faced Zenit in Leningrad that Kucherevskyi began to believe his side could win the title.

"Matches against Zenit were always difficult," he said, "and the difficulty was increased because it was already cold and they were playing on their artificial pitch. Before the match I told the players to forget they were playing on an artificial surface and just play as though they were playing on grass. All the players were covered in blood because of friction burns, but we won 1-0, and that was when I knew we would win the league."

It is five or six years now since I met him in a dingy, smoky room at Dnipro's training camp, but I remember being struck by his ambivalence to the reforms of the past 20 years, his joy at liberalisation but his deep suspicion at the impact of money. He was somehow both enthusiastic and world-weary, as though the cynicism built up by years of frustration could not quite extinguish his passion for the game.

Although Dnipro were the first Soviet club to privatise, financially they have fallen way behind both Dynamo ([25.0] to reach the knockout stage of the Champions League) and Shakhtar ([16.0] to retain the Europa League]).

"Today, money is the decisive factor," Kucherevskyi said.

"Nowadays, if you have money, you can buy players, you can pay salaries, you can build a training base - everything that is necessary for football. In the USSR, everything was based on order, on being afraid, on discipline.

"Back then we often had to break the law. We had to find money to motivate the players because footballers earned less than a cleaner did in England. Coaches were not simply coaches: I would wake up in the morning and have to think about everything from the toilet paper for the players to the team-bus. I had to go to the authorities to beg them for things. At that time it was normal to say 'I have wangled something', rather than just 'I have got something'."

He adapted well to the new age, though, and twice took Dnipro to third place in the Ukrainian league. In each of his five seasons in charge between 2001 and 2005, they reached the semi-finals of the Ukrainian Cup.

But then, on 26 August 2006, it all came to an end as his Mercedes hit a Kamaz truck. He died 90 minutes later, having never regained consciousness. Lobanovskyi had died following a stroke four years earlier; a year later, Prokopenko left a barber's shop in Odessa and collapsed and died on the pavement outside. All the great triumvirate were gone; none made it through their sixties.

And so Ukrainian football has moved from the old age, though the transition to the new age, to the new age itself. Dnipro are managed now by Volodymyr Bezsonov, who spent the majority of his playing career under Lobanovskyi; the national manager, Oleksiy Mykhailychenko (pictured), is also a Lobanovskyi pupil. The trinity may be gone, but their legacy lives on.