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BLOKHIN: UKRAINE LOOKS STRONGER THAN GREECE
Former head coach of Ukrainian national team
Oleg Blokhin shears his point of view on the coming 2010 World Cup playoff
matches Ukraine vs. Greece and Russia vs. Slovenia.
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Oleg Blokhin Photo SPORT EXPRESS
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Oleg Blokhin is the only one Ukrainian specialist who led
the national team to the final stage of the World championship where it
reached quarterfinals back in 2006. Now Ukraine will have to compete for
the right to participate in the 2010 World Cup finals against Greece,
where Blokhin began his coaching career.
"I am not the best person to talk about modern Greek team, because
I haven't watched their qualifying games", said Blokhin to Sport
Express. "Their head coach Otto Rehhagel changed players' psychology
completely when he led this team to fantastic triumph at Euro-2004".
"Moreover many Greek players perform outside their home country.
So only thanks to their head coach they managed to win European crown".
"However people forget everything good very quickly. So far as I
know after Greece failed to win the top place in not very hard group and
had to squeeze to the World Cup finals through playoff matches, Rehhagel's
future is in doubt".
"If they don't knock out Ukrainian team, the coach's former achievement
won't help him. Though I don't know modern Greek team well, I guess that
they are not so strong like five years ago".
"People often say in this situation that chances are equal, but I
think that Ukraine stands better chances to win this clash".
"To my mind Ukraine made everything possible in this qualifying campaign,
though they could have earned more points".
"Judging by quality of Russia's football, I suppose that they lost
the chance to guarantee World Cup berth without playoff matches. Only
bad luck didn't let them beat Germany at home. Guus Hiddink's men looked
more preferable at Luzhniki, but this fact doesn't mean anything without
scored goals".
"Guus Hiddink managed to make players believe in him and themselves.
We did the same thing in the World Cup-2006 qualifying campaign when we
convinced players that they could reach the final tournament from the
first place in the group".
"It's very wise that the draw didn't faces Russia and Ukraine in
playoffs, because it would be unfair to fight against each other now instead
of going to the South Africa together".
"I repeat that teams have equal chances in playoff matches. Russian
team is bronze medalist of Euro-2008, however slightest underestimation
of the opponent could play a bad joke with them".
"I should note that Ukraine had bad experience of playing with Slovenia
at the same stage, as they deprived us of a chance to play at Euro-2000".
Sport
Express Daily, 30 Oct 2009
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