Jonathan Wilson
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The Ukrainian side are one match from the final, largely thanks to their famous academy and the canny management of Myron Markevych
It is 11 years since I visited Dnipropetrovsk. It may have changed, but back then it was a bracingly industrial city, the river thick with green sludge. Amid the factories and the endless brick there was one oasis: Dnipro’s impressive training base, a block of immaculate, manicured pitches surrounded by trees. “Dnipro always had a good school,” said their then coach, Yevhen Kucherevskyi. He is dead now, killed in a car crash in August 2006, but the academy remains a cornerstone of the club: 12 of the first-team squad are home-grown.
On Thursday Dnipro face Napoli in Kiev in the second-leg of their Europa League semi-final. After a 1-1 draw at the San Paolo, it is their biggest game in 27 years. Kucherevskyi was the coach then as well. In 1987, he had led Dnipro to second in the Soviet Supreme League but before the start of the 1988 season their two best players, Hennadiy Lytovchenko and Oleh Protasov, had been sold to Dynamo Kyiv. Kucherevskyi made their departures a positive. “I know that some of you were dissatisfied that all the newspapers wrote about Lytovchenko and Protasov, but now they’ve gone, and you must prove that all of you are worthy of praise,” he told his players. “We’re a bench that has lost two nails, that’s all.”
Related: Europa League: Dnipro hit Napoli late and draw while Sevilla do for Fiorentina
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It is 11 years since I visited Dnipropetrovsk. It may have changed, but back then it was a bracingly industrial city, the river thick with green sludge. Amid the factories and the endless brick there was one oasis: Dnipro’s impressive training base, a block of immaculate, manicured pitches surrounded by trees. “Dnipro always had a good school,” said their then coach, Yevhen Kucherevskyi. He is dead now, killed in a car crash in August 2006, but the academy remains a cornerstone of the club: 12 of the first-team squad are home-grown.
On Thursday Dnipro face Napoli in Kiev in the second-leg of their Europa League semi-final. After a 1-1 draw at the San Paolo, it is their biggest game in 27 years. Kucherevskyi was the coach then as well. In 1987, he had led Dnipro to second in the Soviet Supreme League but before the start of the 1988 season their two best players, Hennadiy Lytovchenko and Oleh Protasov, had been sold to Dynamo Kyiv. Kucherevskyi made their departures a positive. “I know that some of you were dissatisfied that all the newspapers wrote about Lytovchenko and Protasov, but now they’ve gone, and you must prove that all of you are worthy of praise,” he told his players. “We’re a bench that has lost two nails, that’s all.”
Related: Europa League: Dnipro hit Napoli late and draw while Sevilla do for Fiorentina
Continue reading...
More...