Ukraine's U-21 national team defeated Azerbaijan 1-0 in the Euro 2025 qualifying match and confidently leads the Group F table with five wins in five matches.
Unai Melgosa"It was more than our problem. Yes, we felt we had plenty of chances, 2-3 crosses. But we didn't score and started to feel less comfortable. We were lucky to earn a penalty in the last minutes. The second half was definitely not our best game. Sometimes such matches happen, but we try to avoid them. Perhaps it turned out that the opponent was positioned very low and was waiting for us, and we accepted it. And they decided to do something different. So I am satisfied with the score, but not with the game.
At some points, we tried to give a signal to the players and the team that we wanted to add energy to this match, because things were not going in our favour. So we tried. It didn't work out quite the way we wanted, we even allowed the opponent to create chances at our goal. I'm not very happy about it, we need to fix it, because in another match the situation could be different.
I'm very happy for the whole team and for Brazko. [After the match, I just congratulated the players and wished them success in this final period of the year in the championships.
The main feeling is that the team did a great job. Yes, we didn't do well in the second half [of the game against Azerbaijan], but we need to evaluate the team from the previous match, and only then make a global assessment of this second half. We showed who we are, although some of the players are new to the team and do not have such significant experience in the national team. It was hard, but we didn't expect to win all the matches either. Now we have a situation that needs to be resolved. It is also a kind of training for the players. They are still under 21, they shouldn't forget that, and things like this sometimes happen.
The issue is not the system of play, five or four defenders. It's about the DNA of the Ukrainian national team, which we want to have in the team. We can play a different formation, but our intensity will probably be the same.
In the first half, they [senior Ukraine] were very focused on the opponent, while we were focused on ourselves, because our players need to get better, to think about their strengths and weaknesses. Maybe we can do that sometimes, but the main thing in the game system is the idea we want to have in the national team," Melgosa said.
