Former Ukraine striker Ivan Getsko, who scored the first goal for the national team, shared his impressions of the 2-2 draw between our youth team and Spain.
Ivan Getsko- The game left a double impression. Not everything was as good as we would have liked. Especially the first half, which was a disaster: even before the half-time break, our youth team should have been 0-3 down. Footballers of this level have no right to make such gross mistakes as happened during this time! After all, they are players in the Premier League - and then this... I must say that the Spaniards did not look very convincing either. Although they play in the top clubs, score 8-10 goals and give 5-6 assists in each championship, there is no game as such. The Spaniards did not play confident football. You can see that the youth is a bit raw - both theirs and ours. Either one team holds the ball and no one else needs anything, or the other team holds it and no one else needs anything either. The same thing happened after the goals were scored. It was purely children's football, I think. Both teams reached the quarter-finals ahead of schedule, so this match decided whether Ukraine or Spain would leave the group in first place and play a weaker opponent.
- Did the introduction of a number of "fresh" players in the second half, who had delivered results in the previous two matches - Kashchuk, Brazhko, Sudakov and Sikan - change the course of events on the pitch?
- Most likely, it was a tactical move so that these players had game practice and could feel the tension and intensity of emotions in a game of this nature. The coaching staff's calculation is that these guys, although they did not play the whole match, nevertheless took part in it and felt its intensity. This is all very important. During this time, the penalty was deliberately taken, and the aggravation at the Spanish goal was more or less normal. All this gave confidence to the guys who came on as substitutes in the decisive phase of the match. It's a pity that after the eleven-metre penalty, our youth team failed to keep the winning score. It's a shame that we created chances for the Spaniards... we did. However, as well as vice versa.
Viacheslav KULCHYTS'kyi
