Andriy Pavelko: “We chose quality instead of populism”

10.06.2018 15:05

In progress communication with journalists at the NSC "Olympic" FFU President Andriy Pavelko also spoke about UEFA President Alexander Cheferin's visit to the FFU Production plant.

- It is also no coincidence that my colleagues, heads of national federations of other countries, and other dignitaries during their stay in Kyiv showed great interest in recent events in our country, - said the President of the FFU. - The first of them is the opening of the FFU Production plant. By the way, I plan to gather experts and public figures together in the near future to discuss the direction in which we should move. Because without the construction of sports grounds and football fields, Ukrainian football has no future. For the UEFA President, who visited our plant, the experience of the Ukrainian federation was very interesting. Although you saw the tight schedule we worked on, we held both the UEFA Executive Committee and the FFU Congress in Kyiv. However, the trip to the plant aroused great interest in Alexander Cheferin. By the way, our joint projects with FIFA and UEFA are monitored continuously. And for the first time in the history of the Ukrainian federation, we involve an audit company, which is also a partner of UEFA and part of the world's "big four" - "Ernst & Young", which demonstrates the openness of the decisions made by the Football Federation of Ukraine.

"Alexander Cheferin set an example for us to other countries"

And I felt proud when Alexander Cheferrin, visiting our factory, which is one hundred percent owned by the football community of Ukraine, set us as an example to other countries, calling on other national associations to imitate FFU. This is a high appreciation, and I am grateful to the team that did such a job in such a short time.

Today we see that the "Marshall Plan" - the construction of two and a half thousand sites - will be implemented. Despite all the criticism. We are grateful for critical remarks, suggestions, amendments, but it is very important that we finally do everything so that our children have the opportunity to train and have a place and something to do so. Here is a fact: over the past 25 years of independence, more than 700 sites have been built - and we have built about the same number in the last three years. This is in addition to the eight full-size stadiums, which no one had built before, because the football federation simply did not set such tasks.

"Poland, Germany, Iceland have followed the same path"

We have to take into account that in order to fulfill the same task, neighboring Poland has built 2009 such sites since XNUMX, which were called "eagles". But later the Poles regretted that during the construction they did not pay the necessary attention to the manufacturer, to the quality of these fields. However, today these are very popular venues and stadiums in Poland, which enjoy the attention and support of the authorities. Slavomir Novak, who now works as the head of Ukravtodor, told about it. The national associations of Germany and Iceland followed the same path. Now a similar enterprise is being built in Egypt, by the way, also, as in our country, on the technology of the company "Polytan". It is a world leader in this field. Even FIFA also chose this manufacturer when purchasing artificial flooring for laying near its office. 

And the financial support we have from FIFA and UEFA gives us the opportunity to build, say, a hundred venues. It will be four on the area - it's nothing. But if we build at the same pace as now, it will be two and a half thousand sites, or one hundred per area. This will give us the opportunity to talk about the systematic work of involving children in sports. This is a trend that is supported by all national associations, the whole world is moving to artificial turf.

"The correctness of our choice will be confirmed in time"

At the beginning of our work we considered the simplest technologies. It was one of the Belgian companies that we presented at the XVIII FFU Congress. But FIFA and UEFA representatives after the congress advised us to better study the history of the construction of artificial turf fields and to take a closer look at FIFA's recommendations on this issue. We listened to this advice and came to the conclusion that the best products in the world are produced by Polytan. We decided not to engage in populism, but to emphasize quality. I think that the correctness of our decision will be confirmed at a time when several new generations of young players will grow up in these fields. And this was also confirmed by the UEFA president.

We understand how difficult this question is, how difficult it is to set such global goals in the current economic situation, but we are going to our goal and we will definitely fulfill them.