ABFF U19 0-7 Dinamo BGU ( att : 200 ) - Belarus Women's Premier League

April 30, 2020

Before the match kicked-off I was able to get the team line-ups from the Dinamo Minsk website and some quick research revealed that the Dinamo starting XI contained eight Belarus internationals, Munteanu, the Moldova goal-keeper, Mbane, a 30 year old South African International and Dabda, an 18 year old Cameroon youth international. Another Belarus international was on the bench, as was a Belarus Under 17 international.

Intriguingly, Salimata Simpore, who had scored 5 times in Dinamo’s last two pre-season friendlies was not in the match-day squad. Simpore is a 33 year old Burkina Faso international and has had what can politely be termed “an eventful career”. First was a controversy in switching nationality to transform the fortunes of Equatorial Guinea, then a few years later being dropped from their squad for 2011 World Cup following allegations she was actually a man !! After disappearing for a while, she then re-appeared for Burkina Faso in the 2018 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations, and has now pitched up in Belarus. With Dinamo signing three top African players and FK Minsk having four Africans in their squad, there seems to be some money in the women’s game in Belarus.

The Belarus Under 19 side turned out to be virtually the Under 17 side from last year, and none of their players had previously played in the Belarus Premier League, and frankly, it showed.

The first confession is that I missed the first 30 minutes of this match ! Unfortunately, the link on the Belarus FA website kept giving an error message of “manifest upload error”, which has been suggested this means the stream is only available in Belarus. The match didn't appear to be being streamed on YouTube or MyCujoo either. I then signed onto my Bet365 account, which was giving live match updates but no live stream. Then, as if by magic, streaming did become possible so I clicked to take a look. By this time Dinamo were already winning 3-0. The feed carried no sound and for the rest of the first half the view was only from a camera just outside the Under 19’s penalty area.

As it happens, this was not an issue as the play for the rest of the first half was all in the U19s half as Dinamo looked faster, stronger, more technically proficient and having time to play some nice football. By comparison, the Under 19s were regularly exposed at the back, their midfield unable to win tackles or track back and there appeared to be an overall lack of organisation and ability. Two more goals followed in quick succession to give a 5-0 scoreline at half-time. If you pardon the expression, it was “men against boys” !!

In the second half, views from cameras on the halfway line and just outside the penalty area the U19s were now defending were also part of the live-stream presentation. Dinamo scored again early in the second half, but once they started making substitutions the game started to change. Five substitutions are permitted in this league, and Dinamo used all five to give their fringe players some game time. The two Africans were first to go off, and afterwards the match became a little bit less one sided. Dinamo still dominated, but occasionally the U19s would put a few passes together, one of their forwards was able to show some pace, and they even won a corner. They were also able to put in a couple of free-kicks into the Dinamo penalty area, but in truth never looked like coming close to scoring.

With Dinamo now showing less creativity, the U19’s looked more capable and organised in defence and started to win more challenges. After a couple of glorious chances had been wasted, Dinamo did add another goal near the endto round off the scoring, with a far post tap in after the keeper had partly saved a shot.

The match was played in a good spirit, with the only yellow card being brandished in the 91^st minute when a Dinamo player cynically stopped a U19s break.

The crowd is shown as being 200 on Soccerway although the AP press report states "fewer than 100". From the TV pictures, I could see two people sitting in the far stand and one man walking around. Unfortunately, the cameras never panned around to show the main stand so it was impossible to judge how accurate this is ! Apparently, entrance was free.

Dinamo will be satisfied with a comfortable winning start although tougher challenges lie ahead. The Under 19s will hopefully have learnt from this and be more competitive against some of the lesser sides in the competition.

For the record the goals were :

4'    Alkhovik
6'    Linnik
27'  Pilipenka
35'  Alkhovik
36'  Shuppo
53'  Shuppo
83'  Kazakevich

Highlights : https://dinamo-minsk.by/en/press-tsentr/~shownews/2020-05-07-10-55-38