Footballers born in 2002 and 2003 will take part in the UEFA Euro U-21 2025 qualifying round, the 2023/25 qualifying cycle. Of course, it is possible to involve players born in 2004 or even younger, because the qualifying round of the UEFA European Youth Championships for this age group ended in July this year with the U-19 tournament in Malta. But in my opinion, these are only unlikely exceptions. The players will be born in 2002 and 2003.
What are the challenges facing the new youth coach?
Since March 2020, the national youth teams of Ukraine have not held/played international friendly matches. The exception is the Victor Bannikov Memorial in August 2021, in which the team born in 2005 took part. At that time it was its first training camp! As a result, there were four matches for teams of the following years of birth: 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007 over the course of three years (if we count until March 2022, the beginning of the great war with Russia).
Footballers born in 2002 have not participated in official matches under the auspices of UEFA since March 2019, after the end of the elite round of the 2018/19 UEFA European Championship 17. At the same time, the UEFA U-19 European Championship 2020/21, in which this age group was to play, was cancelled.
The team born in 2003 held its last official meetings last June (2022) as part of the elite round of the UEFA U-19 European Championship 2021/22. However, between November 2019, when this age group took part in the 2019/20 UEFA U-17 European Championship qualifiers, and autumn 2021, on the eve of the start of the U-19 competition qualifiers, the players born in 2003 were left without international playing practice.
As a result, the next "youth" team will consist of players who have not had regular international practice for almost the last four years! At the same time, this "youth" starts from scratch, because the UAF International Match Calendar 2023 does not provide for events for the U-21 team except for official matches in the qualifiers for the UEFA U-21 European Championship 2023/25.
To conclude this topic, we add the following. At the end of December 2021, at that time, the head coach of the Ukrainian "youth" Ruslan Rotan said the following in an interview with the Team 1 website: "I know that at least 16 European countries have already formed U-20 national teams, which will form the backbone of the youth teams in the future. I hope we will have one too."
In 2016, the UAF, then the FFU (the UAF received a new name in May 2019), closed the U-20 national team project, which began in 2010. FFU's 2017 International Match Calendar (IMC) was left without the U-20 team, which means that its fate was decided at the end of 2016. Six years have passed.
As a result, any "youth" team that will play in September 2023, or the next one that will start in September 2025, has been left without a base team represented by the U-20 national team. The Ukrainian U-21 Championship has also been cancelled as a class. This happened in the spring of 2021. But life goes on.
In principle, the previous "youth" team had the same difficulties in the autumn of 2021, which reached the semi-finals and earned the status of Olympians. Only there was no war. So it's nothing new. Everything is as usual.
Is this normal? This is a rhetorical question. It is a difficult task for the new head coach to solve. In my opinion, in my opinion, one should have no illusions. You should be prepared for quite significant difficulties. For example, not even making it to the play-off round of the championship and, as a result, once again losing the team's rating on the eve of the draw for the new 2025/27 qualifying cycle. At the same time, I could be wrong. Hope dies last.
P.S. "Whoever enters here, abandon all hope" (Italian: lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'entrate) is the final phrase of the text above the gates of hell in Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy.
Vladimir CHERNO-IVANOV
