In the qualifying round of Euro-2023 U-19 youth national team of Ukraine (football players not older than 2004) will play against Kosovo, Cyprus and Sweden. The youth national team of Ukraine U-19 has started a training session dedicated to the qualifying round of Euro-2023 U-19. About how the team will prepare for the tournament, its head coach Serhii Nagornyak told the official website of UAF.
Sergey Nagornyak— Serhii Mykolayovych, what are the plans of your national team in preparation for the qualifying round of the European Championship?
— The time for the training process is catastrophically insufficient, but it is necessary to get out of the current situation. On the 13th, we left Kyiv. We trained for two days in Ryaszew, Poland. At this time, the legionnaires joined us. Again, we will not have much time, so the main emphasis is on tactical exercises. On Tuesday, we will leave Poland for Stockholm, and from there - for Norrkoping. Pre-game training will be held on the 16th, and the start of the tournament will take place on the 17th.
— In our situation, we don't have to complain?
- Exactly. Such are the circumstances today. Over the past three years, I practically did not assemble a team in such a composition. Since the beginning of the CoViD-19 pandemic, we have held only two full-fledged training sessions... Therefore, the main condition for selecting football players for this gathering was game practice.
— How well did you learn your closest competitors?
— So far, there are some difficulties with this. There is only one game of the national team of Kosovo for the last year. But we will come out of the situation in such a way that our first match will be with this opponent, and we will study Cyprus and Sweden during the competition. Instead, rivals have a big problem, how to study us (smiles). We are going to the qualification tournament as a dark horse.
— Advance to the elite round — minimum task for your team?
— Despite all the circumstances, our goal is first place in our quartet. We'll see how it all turns out, this is football, which is often unpredictable.
