International week

 Well, we have had a bit of time off for international week. I always found the international breaks boring and without being able to go to lower league football due to the pandemic, it could have been worse. Fortunately, the lower divisions in Ukraine are now all streamed on YouTube, so a quality weekend was bookended with the 2 reincarnations of Metalist, my favourites and friends Metalist 1925 and FC Metal. I''ll leave the controversies for the other places on social media where I have spoken about this. It was great to see Metalist 1925 beat promotion rivals and cup winners over Ahrobiznes to really gain a foothold in the race for promotion. After a weekend of watching games in Group A such as Dinaz winning at Bukovyna and Karpaty Halych turning over a lacklustre Chaika, it was time for the much more interesting Group B where the other Kharkiv team, Metal FC took on  Dnipro Cherkasy. It was a really good game. 

On Sunday afternoon with an attendance of nearly 9,000 (the biggest of the season anywhere in Ukraine so far) it was something pretty special. Metal, ran by former Shakhtar defender Oleksander Kucher, played a brand of total football more often associated with La Liga than Druga Liga. Veteran Ruslan Fomin opened the scoring right at the start of the game and the biggest shock was that it took until the 40th minute for  Serhiy Lyulka to add a second. Pidlepenets made it 3 just before the break  and Yegor Demchenko made it 4 after 40 minutes. All of the goals were well-taken well-worked team goals. The fifth goal was a penalty taken by headline signing Fares Bahlouli, who when he first came on seemed to think he was playing in a testimonial! He soon changed his ways and it could have been a lot worse for Dnipro Cherkasy, who didn’t actually look that bad. Bahlouli also changed his tune when he got booked for simulation looking for a 6th in the 86th minute. A great match and what looked like a great day for the people of Kharkiv, just a pity things have soured in the media there since Sunday.

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