Week 21. 03.03.2012, 13:30. Avangard stadium. Luhansk. Attendance: 8 000. -2°C

Referee: Yevhen Aranovskyy (Kyiv)

Assistant referees: Oleksiy Andreyev (Donetsk), Oleksandr Korniyko (Myrhorod)
Fourth official: Ivan Bondar (Kyiv)

FFU delegate: Valeriy Avdysh (Simferopol)
FFU inspector: Serhiy Shebek (Kyiv)

ZORYA: Kozachenko, Yarmash, Sunjic, Vernydub, Ignjatijevic, M.Ih.Bilyi (Khudzik, 90 4) Kamenyuka, Galyuza (Cakic, 86), Ferenchak, Rodic (Silyuk, 84), Idahor.

Bench: Postransky, Oliynyk, Addo, Tesak.
Acting Head Coach – Yuriy Vernydub.

KARPATY: Bogatinov, Hirskyy, Balazic, Milosevic, Oshchypko, Holodyuk (Kasyan, 26), Tkachuk, Daushvili (Martynyuk, 61), Eric (Ozarkiv, 82), Lucas, Gladkyy.

Bench: Tlumak, Bolohan, Petrivskyy, Mikhalyov.
Head Coach – Volodymyr Sharan.

Goals: Kamenyuka, 25, 54, 65, Rodic, 60, Galyuza, 80 – Gladkyy, 87.

Booked: M.Ih.Bilyi, 21, Vernydub, 34, Galyuza, 39, Kozachenko, 51 – Hirskyy, 43, Balazic, 55, Oshchypko, 66, Gladkyy, 67.

Probably before the beginning of the match even legendary Paul the Octopus, not to mention pundits from Lviv and Luhansk could predict its final result. However one should realize that the match really took place and the worst nightmare was not a dream. Only time can heal the team spirit after such defeat…

One should give credit to workers of FC Zorya - they did their best to prepare the pitch given the weather conditions. Also the Luhansk team spent a lot of money to acquire new players, seven of which took part in the match against Karpaty. Lots of fans decided to attend the match as they had really missed top-level football in Luhansk. Another incentive for the hosts to try hard to win was their penultimate position in the standings.

We must frankly admit that Zorya showed more speed and desire and won absolutely fairly.
Karpaty lost because of individual mistakes of players, many and many mistakes. It is not necessary to count them, but that for one game too many mistakes have been made – that is a fact. (Although in addition to errors in favor of FC Zorya, the hosting team also was very lucky, at least once. How else to call the goal created by Balazic and Kamenyuka? When was the last time when something similar happened to our defence?)

Fans of Karpaty, which followed the course of events in Turkey and even could watch the match against the leader of the Romanian championship, of course will wonder - why in Antalya everything was fine, and then all went wrong in Luhansk? The answer is one – sometimes it happens in football…

Maybe new players need more time to shake down, maybe acclimatization was an issue as only a week ago the team returned from warm Turkey…

Moreover, as we see, there are objective reasons for defeat in Luhansk. They might not be satisfactory for all but taking into account the beginning of the season, new head coach and new players, the team should be given another chance.
In a week the green-and-whites will open the spring part of the season in Lviv. That is when we will see whether the players will draw correct conclusions from the bitter defeat as the team really owes to first of all those fans, who spent so much time and money while traveling to Luhansk and supported their team no matter what…


FC Karpaty Information Center, www.fckarpaty.lviv.ua
Photos by © Oleksiy Kovalyov, football.ua