‘The more Ukrainians that play in the national league, the more examples for the young generation — let them learn from Shevchenko or Blokhin and not some Zumba-Bumba they took off a tree, gave him two bananas and now he plays in the Ukrainian league.’
— Ukraine coach Oleg Blokhin, 2006
There you are, you see, Dr King — other people have dreams, too. Oleg Blokhin’s dream is a different sort of dream to the famous one you had. A less palatable dream, maybe.
Oleg, 59, is the coach of the Ukraine national football team, and Ukraine is a joint host of the current Euro 2012 football tournament, along with its occasional historical enemy, Poland. If you look at a picture of Oleg, you feel a warm chill of nostalgia: he has that big broad and flat face and frozen eyes you once saw surveying the endless procession of nuclear missiles from a balcony on Red Square in about 1972.
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