Format
The format of the tournaments was changing over the time. If the cup competition keeps being unchanged, the league competition did go through some variations. Until 1997 the league competitions stayed by the previous Soviet format consisting of six groups, while participants of each competed independently of the other five groups with the winners of the groups being qualified for the professional football. The only change that took place is a shift to the fall/spring calendar. In 1997 was introduced a final to identified the national winner of the amateur competition, which introduced two stages to the format with a final tournament chosen in the preselected city.
In 2000 the league competitions changed again introducing another stage to avoid sudden withdrawals and eliminate financially suffering teams. Also the competition changed back to more common all-summer event rather the "european" fall/spring calendar. In 2005 it was decided to eliminate the final game while still continue with the final tournament. In 2008 another change followed, which reduced the format back to two stages, however that did not solve the problem to increase the number of teams in the competition.
In 2010 there was an idea to incorporate the Amateur Association into the PFL as the Third League, eliminating the national amateur competition. The 2010 season also saw a record low number of participants in the competition, a pattern that might eliminate the association naturally in any case, due to poor management.
Read more about this topic: Ukrainian Football Amateur Association