Germany – Ukraine. The day before – football.ua

Ukraine – Germany, Photo: UAF
Nov. 14, 2020, 7 a.m.

The Ukraine national team will have one of the toughest fights of this calendar year. The away game against Germany in the Nations League will clearly be a real test for Shevchenko’s team.

Germany – Ukraine

November 14, Saturday, 9:45 PM. Central Stadium, Leipzig. Ovidiu Hatsegan (Romania): main referee of the meeting. Broadcast on the television channel Ukraine and Soccer 1.

We will know very soon if the Ukrainian national team will be able to offer a dignified resistance to the German team. In the old days, the Ukrainian national team had a kind of trend: whenever the team got together, they played a good first game and failed the second. But the trends are changing. Last time we started with a disastrous result in France. The game with the Germans was the second. The Ukrainians also lost it, but with a minimal score. And Ukraine managed to win the third match against the Spanish.

Now, in the first friendly match against Poland, Ukraine lost again, and the second match will be played again against the Germans. In the previous game, the German team did not seem like a well-coordinated monolithic team, against which teams of the level of Ukraine have no chance. Yes, the Germans regularly created scoring chances at Georgy Buschan’s gates, but on defense they allowed their opponent a lot.

Andriy Shevchenko and his coaching staff learned previous lessons and realized that we can play through short passes and through ball control only with teams below or equal to us, but not with the best. Teams like Germany, Spain and others are frustrating all hopes and dreams of playing short passes with their high pressure with a large number of players, and so we have to look for options for long vertical passes and fast attacks.

It is very important how our striker can hold onto these balls in the next game and if he can impose a dignified fight on the Bundestim defenders. In the next fight, it is extremely important to win a lot of fights, especially for the attacking players. And, of course, the rebounds in the second third of the field are very important. There the German team will exert maximum pressure on our players. There is hope that our trio Zinchenko-Malinovsky-Stepanenko will not be confused and can get out of this situation with dignity.

On the eve of the match, the official UAF website announced new infected players in the Ukrainian national team: Viktor Kovalenko, Serhiy Sidorchuk, Andriy Yarmolenko and Viktor Tsygankov. Sidorchuk and Kovalenko are not so tangible losses for the main team. It is unlikely that these players would have appeared on the field in a match against Germany, except after entering as substitutes. But the loss of Yarmolenko and Tsygankov is a serious blow to the prospects in the future match. And if with his experience and skill, Marlos can somehow compensate for the loss of Yarmolenko on the right flank, then in the match against Poland we all clearly saw how big the difference is between Tsygankov and Zubkov now. The loss of the leader of the Kiev Dynamo seems irreparable on the eve of this fight. On the day of the game, the Ukrainians will have to do another test, we hope there will be no new cases.

The defeat of Poland still inspires confidence and hope for a good match in the game against the Germans. If Yarmolenko and Tsygankov had not been eliminated, it would have been quite possible to take the risk and bet on the draw, but in the new circumstances, the minimal victory of Germany seems a completely logical result of this meeting.

Confrontation statistics

Total games: 7 (4 wins for Germany, 3 draws, 0 wins for Ukraine), goals scored 14: 6
In the German countryside: 3 games (3 wins for Germany, 0 draws, 0 wins for Ukraine), goals scored 8: 1
In the countryside of Ukraine: 4 games (1 win for Germany, 3 draws, 0 wins for Ukraine), goals scored 6: 5
Most productive match: 3: 3 (2011)

1: 0 prognosis

Sergei Gorbachenko, Football.ua