Ukraine coach Mikhail Fomenko is an old-fashioned disciplinarian who rarely smiles - unless he beats England The irony? The man who nobody really wanted as boss had actually been the one originally asked to chair the committee to find a go-ahead new manager to take over from the iconic Oleg Blokhin late last year. When the committee of Ukrainian Premier League club officials could find nobody suitable, they ended up in desperation asking Fomenko himself to do the job. How the nation groaned at this unwelcome Christmas present. The press could not help wistfully imagining who they might have been writing about instead. It could have been the nation's - and the search committee's - number one choice, Andriy Shevchenko, their newly retired biggest hero. Yet the old Milan legend turned it down, feeling he was too green. Then, amid much national debate about the idea of employing a foreign coach for the first time, everyone got quite energised about the exotic idea of welcoming that colourful "Mr Harry Redknapp of England" before QPR got their man. The committee could even have had Sven-Goran Eriksson for a small fortune but, quite wisely, thought better of it. So a nation turned reluctantly to Fomenko himself. Remember how underwhelmed England was at the uninspiring, if safe, choice of an itinerant 64-year-old coach? Well, for Roy Hodgson here, read Fomenko in Ukraine. It was widely seen as a retrograde step just when Ukrainian football had the chance to forge a new direction. Here was an old nomadic coach who had not really been successful for years, who had been out of work for two years since working in Russia's second division and not coached in Ukraine for five. Moreover, he was only asked to lead the manager search because he was an old Dynamo Kiev team-mate and friend of the Federation president, Anatoly Konkov. It looked another tired, old pals" act appointment with Ukraine's World Cup ambitions, after a draw with Moldova and defeat at home to Montenegro, already assumed to be dead. Yet what Fomenko had going for him, like Blokhin before him, was respect as an old hero of Lobanovsky's grand Dynamo Kiev side of the Seventies. "He was a very brave defender who read the game well and whose team-mates described him as a real fighter who kept spirit in the team," explained Ukraine's football communications chief, Oleksandr Glyvynsky. This spirit was exactly what a deflated team needed. "I tried to explain to them they have to concentrate 100 per cent on their work in the national team, that they have to understand the whole country is behind them and that playing for the national team is the most important thing for them," Fomenko said on Friday when asked what his secret has been. This unashamed patriot card worked almost instantaneously. Fomenko is known for fiendishly hard training sessions but tactics have not changed dramatically; team spirit did, though. His first match in charge was such a bravura 3-1 win in Poland in March that many observers here felt it the best Ukraine performance since their sole World Cup finals appearance in 2006. Three more impressive qualifying victories have followed; the team, with its mix of young talent and streetwise experience, seems vibrant and confident and, remarkably, the unbeaten Fomenko, in his 20th coaching job, seems like an overnight success after 34 years! Goalkeeper Andriy Pyatov explains how adept Fomenko has been at man management, having found a "common language" with the new, exciting generation of players like Yevhen Konoplyanka and Andriy Yarmolenko. And even if, like his old Dynamo team-mate Blokhin, he has no love for the press, Fomenko is not excitable enough to offer any of them outside for "a man conversation" as Blokhin famously did after the 1-1 draw with England at Wembley. "Blokhin was very emotional, a very different type of personality," Glyvynsky said. He acts on instinct and impulse but I think Fomenko prefers to listen and consider before making decisions. His strength may be man management, getting the best out of each player. Because perhaps all those years in varied jobs, even having coached in Guinea and Iraq to discover more about the football world outside Ukraine, have made Fomenko much more multidimensional than the image often portrayed. Once, Glyvynsky reports, Fomenko told him about the strange, short period he had as Iraqi national team manager back in the early 90s when Saddam Hussein's son Uday, the head of the national Olympic committee, was always on his case. "He said Saddam's son would carry this big silver gun around with him everywhere and whenever he got emotional about something, he would take it out his holster and bang it on the table," laughs Glyvynsky. If Fomenko was not unnerved by that, then, presumably, the pressure of shouldering a nation's hopes on Tuesday night in Kiev will not overly faze him. He might even end up smiling. Danger men: Three men to watch in Kiev Yevhen Konoplyanka Midfield A superb No10, he is fast, technically adept, excellent at set pieces and good with either foot. The Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk playmaker will be looking for a repeat of his wonderful strike from distance at Wembley. After a virtuoso display against San Marino, with a goal and four assists, Ukraine fancy that, at 23, this is his time to graduate to the global league. Andriy Yarmolenko Forward The tall man poses a big danger working off the right flank with his speed and skill. A player who suffered confidence problems when struggling in his early years at Dynamo Kiev, he can still be maddeningly inconsistent, which probably goes with having to live up to the suffocating 'new Shevchenko" tag, but on his day he is as likely a match-winner as his team-mate Konoplyanka. Roman Zozulya Forward The latest 'new Sheva" - or, as they now prefer in Ukraine, 'our Rooney" - missed out on Friday's goalfest through suspension, a mercy for San Marino since he has been in dazzling club form, with five goals in four games for Dnipro. Powerful and dangerous in the air, Zozulya is equally adept at leading the line or prompting from just behind.