Obolon Kyiv v Dynamo Kyiv (14/04/10)



A trip to Obolon Arena, as they now call their stadium beckoned on Wednesday night and although Obolon had had a brief stay in the Premier League before, or the Vishe Liha as it was then known it was strange to see the stands full and we were sat in the main stand, which wasn't even open the last time I was in Ukraine. When Obolon were in the Vishe Liha they tended to play at Respublikansky which always made the ground seem empty.

On the night of the game I met up with Andriy and some of the boys from Obolon when Obolon played in the first league at Shaslive before they had their own stadium, so the contrast was really big.

Dynamo seemed to outnumber the Obolon fans by about 4 to 1 and they seemed to have 4 times as many players on the pitch too. A lot of that had to do with another glittering performance from Shevchenko. Sheva put Dynamo ahead on just 8 minutes, and not to distract from his effort it was easy to see why Obolon have been having a mini goalkeeping crisis of late and Tovt the keeper on this occassion couls perhaps have done better in saving the ball.

Sheva was at the centre of everything that Dynamo did and when he limped off after 30 minutes it looked like it might be the end of his career. He was soon back on his feet though and another fine piece of skill saw him put Dynamo 2 up on 40 minutes. A mention also has to go out to Eremenko who was instrumental in setting up both of Sheva's goals.

At half time we were treated to a few beers, actually we were treated to a few beers all the time during the match. It's not often you can sit in your seat and have a beer at a stadium , but at Obolon it's basically encouraged, which is one of the advantages of watching a club owned by a brewery. The Dynamo fans also put on a bit of a show, which was quite impressive and included Ultras setting off fireworks on the neighbouring buildings and someone hang gliding across the pitch.

The second half was more of the same and Magrao made it 3-0 on 63 minutes with a lovely lob and on 83 minutes Zozulya finished the scoring to make it 4-0 to Dynamo in a game with no controversy and no real chances for Obolon. It was good to see some old faces from Obolon and have a few beers and to see Shevchenko have another great game. We were also sat near Artem Milevskiy who was suspended, which kind of annoyed Shurik who had VIP seats where as we were in the normal seats.

The school behind the stadium in the pictures of the match action here is the school that Shevchenko and Shovkovskiy went to

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