Back In The USSR: Shevchenko swansong and other games

Ukraine 2 Sweden 1

Ukraine’s victory over the Swedes was all about the magnificent swansong of Andrey Shevchenko. Kiev looked like it was heaving to celebrate “Sheva”, the city's favourite son, and that was before he made two extraordinary precision headers to overcome a first half deficit and win the match.

WTF? Swedish fan in Kiev

Thirty five year old Shevchenko is the most iconic of Ukrainians — one of the few remaining players with a substantial memory of life in the old Soviet Union. He shares his surname with the nineteenth century literary father of the nation, and grew up in a town made desolate by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster when he was ten. If he was English, he’d be Johnny Shakespeare from Coventry.

Sheva expected to have quit the game by now, and by rights he should have retired to the forest to make wood carvings, or whatever elderly Ukrainians do these days. Instead, savouring the notion of ending his career in glory competing in his homeland championships, Sheva spent the past two years being fitted with false knees, new vertebrae, robot hips — anything to keep him on his feet for the last hoorah. It was worth it.

The politics in Shevchenko's country may remain opaque to lazy Westerners like me, but not to German team captain Philip Lahm. Lahm got on-message before the tournament to condemn Kiev’s imprisonment of Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymashenko, the curious oligarchess who courts nationalist sentiment by shaping her hair in a braided “wheel” and wearing traditional Ukrainian garb. According to Lahm, Germany stands for a democratic society: “for values like fairness and tolerance, for integration”, and thus it is his duty to highlight these issues. Steven Gerrard and John Terry were unavailable for comment.        

Poland 1 Russia 1

Few places harbour deeper bitterness towards their Russian neighbours than Poland, which made UEFA’s decision to allow their Group A match to take place on Russia Day look like a serious mistake. Russian fans attempted a three thousand strong march through Warsaw to celebrate their national holiday, and in the stadium unfurled a banner which declared: “This is Russia”, showing about as much tact as the Red Army had shown taking the city in 1945.

Warsaw Pact stamp

The game itself was pulsating classic. Russia began at their dynamic counterattacking best, stretching the hosts’ defence to its limits and eventually taking the lead through the brilliant Alan Dzagoev. But the Poles were resilient. Russia wilted worryingly and left Poland in full control. As the game rocked to a crescendo, skipper Kuba Błas..zc..szy..s..(that guy) took the ball on his right foot at full pelt, manoeuvred it onto his left,  and leathered the tournament’s first scorcher into the far post to equalise. It was a moment of drinkspilling euphoria equal to the Shevshenko triumph in Ukraine the previous night.

Czech 2 Greece 1

This was a decent watch, showcasing yet another international blunder by Petr Cech that nearly cost the Czechs the match.  ITV’s coverage was distracted by a succession of corny “bounced Czechs” jibes from commentator Jon Champion mocking the Greeks’ financial meltdown. To even matters up, Champion went on to make puns about the USSR’s crushing invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and the tragedy of the Prague Spring. He didn’t, of course, but I'd have liked to have seen him try.