Igor Linnik: "The results of the national team far exceed the state of affairs in our football"

Famous journalist Igor Linnik has commented on the results of the performance of the Ukrainian national team in September's Euro-2024 qualifying matches.

"In my opinion, the recent results of the national team of Ukraine, as well as its current place in the group tournament of selection for Euro-2024, far exceed the current state of affairs in our football.

Due to their coaching skills, Serhiy Rebrov's staff have pulled even more out of our football than there is in it at the moment - both in terms of organisation and purely performance. The same results of European Cup qualification speak for themselves...

Yes, on the tournament distance we are not even close to being able to compete with such a team of England, although we got a strategically important draw in a face-to-face match with it. But with the Italian national team, even despite Tuesday's loss, it looks like we will still be in contention.

However, since in our case every qualified player of the national team's foundation is irreplaceable, its subsequent results will directly depend on the real state of literally every one of them at the time of the qualifying matches in October and November.

For example, in two games in September against England and Italy, Mudryk and Yaremchuk were noticeably out of the general rhythm, and Mikolenko is now not in the best conditions, and this significantly limited the ceiling of opportunities for our team.

And that is why Rebrov rightly says that for the Ukrainian national team the pairing of matches in the interval of 3 days against top rivals is an incredibly difficult challenge.

And if on England this selection of players somehow, on fresh legs and emotions, but was enough, then against Italy our first two substitutions were not to strengthen, but to weaken the game. Rebrov objectively simply did not have the resource for a controlled change of the situation on the pitch.

That is why in the next couple of months every surviving football bayonet of ours will be under special consideration.

Frankly speaking, I have no idea whether our current UPL can help the Ukrainian national team in any way. Unless, as always, some of its individual clubs ..." - wrote Linnik on Facebook.