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The team history must not forget: Ukrainian soccer's fight to carry on

Related Topics: Oleksandr Petrakov

OLEKSANDR PETRAKOV LOOKED around the airplane at his boys with both love and disgust. He sat in 1A, front left, his usual head coach seat, as he and the Ukrainian national soccer team flew from Glasgow to Yerevan, Armenia for their next match. They'd lost 3-0 to Scotland a few hours before, just his second loss as the national team manager, but whatever hurt inside him did not pass his lips. That was normal. He's the son of a hard-drinking Soviet factory worker and came up in the USSR athletics machine. Once he dispatched an eight-question press conference in 37 words.