The Mallory List: Too Many Surprises. Don't Drown in..

As promised: timely, original, one might even say unconventional: the presentation of candidates for the Ukrainian national team to participate in the Nations League matches was impressive. I can't remember the last time it was like this.

And the new head coach of the Ukrainian national team, Andrea Maldera, turned out to be pleasant, reasonably candid, and sometimes even sincere in communication, which was very different from at least three of his predecessors in this position.

For some reason, I believe him when he says he had trouble sleeping for several nights before announcing the list. He is emotional, relatively new in this field, seemingly not yet corrupted, so anything is possible.

Maldera and his assistants' specific work should also be noted: they really sifted through a lot of "material." In this particular case, Maldera seemed to work more like a youth team coach than the head team coach - the scope of his attention was too broad.

Yes, this is his work, his and his assistants' direct responsibility, but, again, if we talk about similar situations, our previous coaches limited themselves to stating the obvious or making superficial changes. Now, there is an obvious attempt to delve deeper.

And this attempt, especially compared to previous "non-attempts," truly deserves praise.

Now, let me express my personal observations regarding the personnel: both those who were called up and partially those who were not.

First of all, it is impossible for the coaching staff to satisfy all "wishes" a priori because working with human material is inherently subjective and based on personal preferences. It is clear that objectivity and logic will be present in this construct - for example, no unique player will refuse, let's say, Mykolenko on the left flank of defense if Vitaliy is healthy. However, in other aspects, there is room for experimentation, trying to combine subjectivity and objectivity, experience and youth, new and old faces.

Based on all this, I can cautiously note that the final (at the moment) list of thirty players turned out to be unexpectedly diverse. This is not necessarily bad in general, but personally, I have concerns that the new national team coach might lose his footing due to such an unexpected selection.

In simpler terms, there are reasons to believe that the starting lineup of our national team for the inaugural Nations League match (against Hungary) will be highly unpredictable. Perhaps this approach can confuse the opponent, but more importantly, we wouldn't want to confuse ourselves in the end. And we might confuse ourselves primarily because Maldera won't have time to solidify a diverse starting lineup for the national team.

Now, regarding the personnel. Immediately - about the absentees. The non-call-up of Yarmolyuk is an obvious and major oversight by Maldera, and the explanation for not calling up the "Brentford" player by the Italian coach did not sound very convincing to me personally. Yarmolyuk has an injury, but the injury is not serious, Yegor really wanted to play, but I didn't want to force him...

So, they force him at "Brentford"? If not, and most likely they do, then the injury is indeed not serious. And if so, it means that Yarmolyuk is not very eager to play for the national team?

Overall, this specific case is a clear misjudgment by Maldera. Yarmolyuk is currently the best professional footballer with a Ukrainian passport, and not calling up such a player is, at the very least, strange.

The absence of Andriy Lunin also seems strange, but in this case, this peculiarity is purely formal. Well, in the sense that the player supposedly plays for "Real" but is not called up to the national team. Although in this case, it has been mentioned more than once that the player himself does not want to come to the national team. And if so - it is too much of an honor to ask this benchwarmer to join.

And one more absence to mention - even in the reserve list, there is no Ivan Kaluzhny. And this is in the absence of Yarmolyuk. Yes, currently the form of the "Kharkiv" captain is not outstanding, but he has regular playing practice, while some others made it to the list without such practice.

Moving on. Immediately, five (!) debutants: Drambayev, Krupsky, Varfolomyev, Khlan, and Stepanov.

Regarding Krupsky, there are no questions: in the absence of the injured Konoplya, Ilya is the only nominal right-back in Maldera's list.

Stepanov is currently making waves in the Dutch championship, scoring regularly, and he needs to play for our national team "just in case."

As for the other three, their inclusion is unexpected and ambiguous, and they are unlikely to be immediately in the starting lineup. However, in this specific case, conclusions can be drawn after the national team's game cycle (whether they played or not; and if they debuted, how they performed).

A few words about those who were called up "for their good looks." This is primarily about Sudakov and Zubkov, and partially about Trubin, Dovbyk, and Yaremchuk.

These undoubtedly qualified players either have certain or clear problems with playing time at their clubs. However, they were called up. Either as moral support or because they are better in their positions than those with playing time?

And I can't ignore the immediate call-up of six (!) forwards. Instead of the expected three. And this is despite probably playing with only one pure striker.

Yes, four matches in such a short period, but six is, in my opinion, excessive. Especially with the group of "attacking players," where, besides the forwards, there are five more players. Five for just two positions...