Yesterday, the national team of Ukraine moved to the final stage of preparation for the Euro 2024 qualifying match with England, which will take place on 9 September in Wroclaw, Poland.
The coaching staff is finalising the work that the blue and yellows started at the Polish training camp last Sunday. Today, the Ukrainians trained on the pitch of the local stadium in Trzebnica, where the team arrived in full strength.
The evening session began with warm-up exercises for the muscles, which were suggested by the physical training coach Vitaliy Kulyba. After that, the team performed tactical tasks to work out the game model chosen by head coach Serhii Rebrov. Attention was also paid to the development of specific elements of the game.
Yesterday, the guests of the Ukrainian national team were children from the Yednist football academy from the town of Zelena Hura. This football school was founded a year and a half ago, after the aggressor's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Today, the academy has about 200 children aged 3-14, 90 per cent of whom are Ukrainians and 65 per cent are refugee children.
The boys and girls watched the national team training, after which the players and head coach came up to the children to take pictures with them and leave autographs. The children's joy was overwhelming. Traditionally, Oleksandr Zinchenko and Mykhailo Mudryk received the most attention, and all the children wanted to get an autograph from the head coach, who was presented with his own shirt as a souvenir by the Academy.
In a positive mood, the teams returned to the hotel, where many Ukrainian football fans were already waiting in front of the entrance, wanting the same thing - photos and autographs. So after the football work, the blue and yellows had to do a lot of handwork, painting balls and shirts.
Today is the national team's pre-game day. At 17.30 local time, head coach Serhiy Rebrov and a player from our team will meet with the media in the conference room of the Wroclaw City Stadium, and at 18.00, an official training session will take place at the arena called Tarczynski Arena, the first 15 minutes of which will be open to the media.