Football in Ukraine

Football is the most popular sport in Ukraine. Over half of the people in Ukraine are interested in football. The Ukrainian Association of Football is the national governing body and is responsible for overseeing all aspects of football game in the country. It was organised in 1991 to replace the Soviet republican-level Football Federation of Ukrainian SSR, created earlier in the 1920s as part of the Soviet system of physical culture councils. The Ukrainian Association of Football is a non-governmental organization and is a member of the National Olympic Committee of Ukraine.
There are several types of football: professional male and female football, amateur male and female football, youth leagues and children's competitions, football veterans and beach football, indoor competition and separate competitions for students and military personnel. Ukraine fields a great number of different national teams for various types of international competitions including continental and world qualifications, Universiades, youth competitions, and international competitions for beach and indoor football.

Summary

The Ukraine national senior team has qualified for the FIFA World Cup once, in 2006, where they reached the quarter-finals led by the former Soviet football star player Oleh Blokhin. The team also qualified on couple of occasions to the continental championship in 2012, 2016, 2020, 2024. The Ukraine first junior team made it to the final of the 2006 UEFA European Under-21 Championship. The Ukraine second junior team won the 2009 UEFA European Under-19 Championship and made it to the finals of the FIFA U-20 World Cup. The Ukraine student team won two football tournaments at the Summer Universiade and made it to the finals of another one.
Dynamo Kyiv and Shakhtar Donetsk are among the most recognisable clubs that are from Ukraine. Dynamo Kyiv traces its fame from the Soviet times as they won the European Cup Winners' Cup twice in 1975 and 1986. In 1975 Dynamo extended its success into the UEFA Super Cup as well. In 2009 Shakhtar Donetsk won the UEFA Cup. Among the famous players to come out of Ukraine were Oleh Blokhin and Andriy Shevchenko. The legendary coach Valeri Lobanovski led Dynamo Kyiv to their European Cup victories as well as coaching the former Soviet and later on the Ukraine national football team: He is a Ukrainian football hero.
Ukrainian football professional club competitions are organised in the three-tier league system. Parallel with them there is a knockout competition the Ukrainian Cup. There is also a Super Cup match up that is being conducted on annual basis among the top two best clubs in the country. Several amateur level tournaments are played nationally as well as in every region ; for more information, please see Ukrainian football league system. Female football is less developed, however there is a female national team and a two-tier league system competition for clubs. Among the most successful clubs are Lehenda Chernihiv and Zhytlobud Kharkiv.
Ukraine has also highly developed children's and youth football. There is a national competition conducted by all professional clubs of Ukraine and some better sports schools or football academies. It is a multiple tier league with several regional-based divisions. Each club is represented by four squads with players in age groups ranging from under 14 to under 17. In addition to the national youth league, the Ukrainian Premier League has own competitions for older youth players who play a day before of each UPL round competitions. Parallel to that there is an independent Student League which encompasses teams of various universities and institutions of higher education. Selected players from that league successfully compete at student Olympics, the Universiada. The regional amateur football competitions also provide training opportunities for the young soccer stars.

History

Modern Ukrainian club competitions derived mostly from the Soviet competitions.
Divided at Zbruch, the first football competitions in Ukraine appeared in 1900–1910s including the portion of Ukraine that was part of the Russian Empire as well as Austria-Hungary. Competitions were conducted in main cities which were Lemberg, Kyiv, Odesa, Kharkiv, and Donbas. Those competitions often involved participations of students or workers either factories or other major employers. In 1912 on initiative of Moscow and Petrograd football enthusiasts of foreign descent in Imperial Russia was constituted "Russian championship among cities" where each city was represented by a collective team. In Imperial Austria on the other hand at around that time started regional competitions at "crownland" level as well as a domestic cup. During the World War I competitions in both empires were suspended for a short period of time. Following the war, political situation has changed in Central Europe as the major European empires fell and were fragmented into many smaller national states. After failing to secure its independence in 1917–1920, Ukraine was torn apart by the Soviet Russia and former Russian province, the restored Poland.
The first recorded national competition in Soviet Ukraine started in 1921 and was a competition among city teams that represented a participating city championship. In Western Ukraine that was part of Poland, ethnic Ukrainians declared official boycott at organization level and held separate competitions from the official Polish competitions. Later, however, some Ukrainian based clubs joined the "Piłka Nożna" competitions among which was Ukraina Lwów. Soon after the establishment of the Soviet Union in 1924 there was established the Soviet Championship of Cities. Unlike the Imperial Russian competitions, the Soviet competitions involved participation of national teams. The Soviet Championship of Cities existed simultaneously along with republican level championships of cities in each union republic. In interbellum Czechoslovakia which secured control of Carpathian Ruthenia following the World War I, there existed regional competitions of eastern Slovakia and Carpathian Ruthenia and at one point local Rusj Uzgorod qualified for the Czechoslovak State League.
The organization of the Ukrainian SSR Championship of Cities was organized by the All-Ukrainian Council of Physical Culture which was a republican institution and a branch of the Soviet All-Union Council of Physical Culture. In 1936 in the Soviet Union was organized first football competitions among teams of master or so called "exhibition teams" in four groups that acted as tiers. To the new Soviet competitions were selected several teams from the Ukrainian SSR. The new Soviet reform in football also made some changes to republican competitions. The Ukrainian SSR Championship of Cities was also reformed in 1936 where each city team was competing by representing its sports society, factory, mine, port, collective farm thus transforming into so called "Championship of Sports Societies and Departments". This way some Ukrainian teams competed at All-Union level and others at republican, however all Ukrainian teams played at the Ukrainian Cup including those that played at the All-Union competitions such as Dynamo Kyiv and Stakhanovets Stalino.
During World War II, the Soviet Union annexed territories of eastern Poland, and because of that competitions in Poland were disrupted. The previous clubs of the region were dissolved as national bourgeoise clubs and replaced with newly created Soviet "proletarian" clubs such as Spartak or Dynamo. Some former Polish players from the dissolved clubs joined the new Soviet counterparts, while others moved out of the country, were deported or pursued other goals. During the Nazi occupation there was no recorded national football competitions, but there were regional competitions. Czechoslovakia that was previously partitioned by its neighbors had its Carpathian Ruthenia occupied by Hungary and teams from the region joined the Hungarian competitions. Following defeat of the Nazi Germany and its allies, the Soviet Union resumed its domestic competitions including in the newly annexed Carpathian Ruthenia.
With the transformation of the council's football section into the Football Federation of the Ukrainian SSR in 1959, the Ukrainian championship was integrated into the Soviet championship of Master teams in the Class B starting from 1960, which eventually was transformed into the Soviet Second League. The Championship of Sports Societies and Departments was reorganized into competitions of physical culture collectives, better known as the republican KFK competitions. In 1990 there took another transformation in Soviet football and all republican championships were relegated to the Soviet Second League B or the lower second league, while the Soviet Second League was split into three regional groups instead of previous nine. Several former Soviet republics started the process of secession from the Union, such as the Baltic states and Georgia. In 1992 the Soviet championship ended and the 1991–92 Soviet Cup that was planned to be transformed into the CIS Cup was in reality simply an edition of the Russian Cup.
¹ In 1998 KFK competitions were transformed into the Amateur Association.

² From 1993 through 1995 there existed the 3rd League. KFK competitions were grandfathered from the Soviet times.

³ In selected years there existed the supplemental 2nd League.

⁴ District 1.League and City 1.League

⁵ District 2.League and City 2.League
Note: Until 1992 the Soviet Tier III was considered as the republican competition for the Ukrainian SSR. In 1992 most of the Ukrainian-based clubs that competed in the top three tiers were reorganised into the Ukrainian Supreme League, while most of the rest non-amateur clubs were organized into the Ukrainian First League.