Christ, you'd swear they were playing superb football all the time, sweeping all before them and hammering everybody for years and were unlucky not to win the thing on numerous occasions.
A few examples to put this in context.
Rangers in 93, Panathanaikos in 96, Leeds in 01, Villareal in 06 or even Monaco in 17.
Flash in the pan teams that had a decent/lucky run for a year in the champions league?
Or just great European teams stacked with top class players having another great year?
The starting point here is that they were a better side than Inter and Juventus in 1998/99. Aside from both Italian sides ending up in mid-table that year, Inter were extremely dysfunctional, unbalanced and top-heavy, relying heavily on one player, while Juventus had become a shadow of the force that had dominated Europe in the mid-1990s.
But look at Kyiv's record over a three-year period:
1997/98 - Champions League quarter-finalists: winning a group including Barcelona, Newcastle and PSV, pumping Barcelona - who won La Liga that season - 7-0 on aggregate.
1998/99 - Champions League semi-finalists: winning a group that included Arsenal (who pushed United so close in league and cup that year), knocking out Real -the reigning Champions League winners in the quarter-finals - then somehow lost a semi-final they dominated against Bayern.
1999/00 - Champions League last 16: now without Shevchenko, came third in a group of Bayern and Real Madrid, winning 10 points and having a better goal difference, but going out on head-to-head to the Real team that then knocked out United, Bayern and Valencia en route to winning.
They weren't a flash in the pan, but one of the top teams in Europe over a three-year period.