Thanks for a great run

November 19th, 2009 | by: Bannon | Comments(2)

I’ve been staring at this laptop screen for a couple nights now, not sure exactly what to write.
It’s hard to believe our World Cup run is over. I was really getting caught up in the momentum – I was practically packed, ready to go to South Africa to cheer on our Yellow-Blues in person next year.
But it wasn’t meant to be.

Congrats to Greece. You got the win, and you’re in. Otto Rehhagel’s style of football might not be for everyone, but it was enough to stifle Ukraine both home and away.

I wanted to thank the whole team for making it so much fun. Our 2009 team was a solid one – with a number of different personalities and talents. Thank-you Andriy Shevchenko, Oleksiy Mykhailychenko, Milevskiy, Tymoschuk, Nazarenko, Voronin, Pyatov, Gusev… the entire team. All of you made me very proud to call myself Ukrainian-Canadian. Its been a fantastic run.

EURO 2012 is just around the corner, and I’m already counting down the days. I’m really hoping that we’ll get to see some familiar 2009 faces (I’m not putting my Sheva jersey away just yet), but I’m also eager to see some new talent (our junior national teams have been showing a lot of promise). Don’t forget that this next EURO brings with it some magic words, “automatic qualification for host nations”… Let’s show the world what Ukrainians can do.

Cheers to the future!