From devout praying to sitting on the same seat on the team bus, grown soccer coaches and players have their share of superstitions.
From devout praying to sitting on the same seat on the team bus, grown soccer coaches and players have their share of superstitions.
A study of the most common superstitious beliefs known to soccer fans by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, shows that rituals and illogical practices haunt many Ukrainian professional players and coaches. The online poll surveyed 687 football fans in April aged 18 and older; its findings are rather endearing and charming.
In terms of superstitious role models, legendary Soviet and Ukrainian player and coach Valeriy Lobanovsky beats all others. A fervent practitioner of irrational rituals, he categorically forbade women from riding on the team bus or flying in the same airplane as the players, the study says.
On game day, the national team’s breakfast always included a small portion of black Beluga caviar. This practice, along with tea and cookies as the last snack before a match, is still practiced, say football observers.
Lobanovsky also had an aversion to the number 13, identical to what the study’s respondents reported.
Although at their level of play soccer players are confident of their capabilities and skills, they still try to augment this with rituals to gain an extra advantage or to do things ‘just in case. – Volodymyr Pohorilyi, a chief psychiatrist from the Kyiv-based Association of Psychotherapy.
Current national team coach Oleh Blokhin always sits on the front right seat on the team bus. His assistant, Andriy Bal is always seated behind the bus driver in the front.
Dynamo Kyiv’s Coach Yuri Semin, a devout Christian, took his team to a chapel in Vyshhorod district north of Kyiv to pray on the eve of their match against rival Shakhtar Donetsk in May.
Needless to say, Dynamo lost that fixture.
Players often are seen crossing themselves before entering the pitch and step with the same foot first. They also often lace their shoes in a prescribed order.
“Although at their level of play soccer players are confident of their capabilities and skills, they still try to augment this with rituals to gain an extra advantage or to do things ‘just in case,’” said Volodymyr Pohorilyi, a chief psychiatrist from the Kyiv-based Association of Psychotherapy.
Others have falsely rationalized cause and effect outcomes out of completely random acts. Germany’s Mario Gomez once forgot to sing to the national anthem in the youth team, he scored a goal in that match and hasn’t sung along to the anthem ever again.
“This kind of formal logic stems from people observing something that randomly occurred believing that the same outcome will come about if repeated again,” said Pohorilyi of logical fallacies.
Portuguese superstar Cristiano Ronaldo is known to avoid shooting toward the goal before a fixture because he doesn’t want to “waste goals.”
Some players wear a lucky charm, the study said. Most often players drop a lucky coin into their socks but FIFA’s recent crack down on jewelry has made this more difficult.
Recently, Dynamo Kyiv rebranded by reverting to the Soviet design of its famous cursive “D,” as Dynamo had more success in Soviet times. But veteran striker Andriy Shevchenko wasn’t concerned with the design change.
“What’s most important is that the letter ‘D’ is still there. It makes no principled difference whether it’s the old or new version,” Shevchenko said on July 3.
Dynamo beat Shakhtar 3-1 on July 5 with their “new old version” of the emblem.
Kyiv Post staff writers Kostya Dovgan and Mark Rachkevych can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected]
