UPL must be played. The Ukrainian Football Championship is also one of the symbols of statehood

We can exhale – common sense has won. Today, the UPL clubs voted for the mandatory holding of the 2022/23 Ukrainian Football Championship, and this, not even the venue of the tournament, is the most important thing in this meeting.

After all, the conversation was, strictly speaking, about the very future of Ukrainian football. There were “all-out-of-the-way” and “indifferent” people who said what kind of football, why football. Meanwhile, in these turbulent days, the very fate of Ukrainian sports was being decided.

The fact is that while the couch deciders decided the fate of the tournament, to which they have nothing to do, the outflow of football players from the Ukrainian championship did not even reach the level of 2014 – the beginning of the 90s, when the former collections were ready to be thrown into Morocco or the third league of Germany, and young people were sold abroad wholesale and retail – and it’s good if one Andrey Voronin grew up from the whole team.

Often, entire generations disappeared from ownerlessness, others were taken apart by neighboring countries (remember Semak, Mor, Bezrodny, Shcherbakov, Lebed, the Romashchenko brothers, Gerasimets and other forgotten heroes of the dashing 90s) – football Ukraine missed all of them, they were all scammed, as they are now microwave ovens, saucepans or toilet bowls from our dwellings.

And at this crucial moment, if the opinion of incompetent people had been defeated, we would have been thrown back in football for ten years.

But football will win. He will. Participants in European competitions should not have to keep fit on foreign tours, and UPL representatives in the Champions League, Europe and 2023/24 Conferences will be determined on a sporting basis, and not through lots, a strong-willed decision or something else.

And this is the main result of today.

And where to spend is not a question of the day on May 27, 2022. There are bloody battles. The situation at the front is constantly changing. Could we believe in the middle of March that our heroic warriors would drive the invaders out of the Kiev, Chernihiv, and Sumy regions? And they kicked out, as they are now driven out of the Kharkiv region!

If there is a successful counterattack along the width of the eastern and southern fronts, the situation will change again by the start of the 2022/23 Ukrainian Championship. If the enemy is defeated and driven back to the borders of Ukraine, who will question today’s decision?

And most importantly – in the leadership of the country, in a positive sense, pragmatists. If the situation develops in such a way that it will force you to play abroad, special permissions will not take long. But if there is a real safe chance to play in Ukraine, this is the mission of national football, one of the steps towards a familiar life, one of the signals that the most courageous country in the world does not bend even before decisive trials.

It will be a special, unforgettable championship. It will be heroic players, coaches and referees. Years later, the next generations will look at their photos and be proud of their sporting feat. And instead of fictitious “death matches” we will have real “life matches” – and Ukrainian football clubs will charge our long-suffering country with optimism and hope.

We are winning, we have already won the admiration and respect of the whole world. And in football, too, we will be better than we were. Ukrainian Championship 2022/23 in all leagues too. Ukraine – over everything!

Igor Dashkov