Sergiy Puchkov: "Unfortunately, the Ukraine national team has no leader"

Famous Ukrainian coach Serhiy Puchkov shared his impressions of the match of the 2nd round of the group stage of Euro-2024 Slovakia - Ukraine (1:2) and assessed the chances of the Ukrainian national team to get out of the group.

- We can congratulate our national team on the victory. However, everything is still ahead of us. Of course, we have chances to get out of the group. However, it is hard to say from what place - God willing, at least from the second place. And whether it will be so or not - I do not know, we will see on June 26, when Ukraine will meet with the Belgians in the decisive match.

- What do you think about the match between Slovakia and Ukraine, in which our national team won a willful victory 2:1?

- We failed in the first half. We should say thanks to our goalkeeper Trubin, who did a lot to avoid a rout.

I think that this fact to some extent influenced the second half, which was better played by our team. After all, the Slovaks, who went into the break with the score 1:0 in their favor, thought that they would take us with their bare hands. In the first half they controlled the game, created a lot of chances and scored, so we hoped that everything would go well for them. However, everything turned out differently and I am very glad that everything ended in our favor.

- Who in the Ukraine national team did you like most of all with his actions?

- Trubin. And if we talk about the field players, it is difficult to single out anyone in particular. I will only say that Sudakov moved a lot, it should be noted Shaparenko, who scored a goal and made a goal. And for someone to take over the game, you can not say that about our national team in this match. Unfortunately, we don`t have a leader who can lead the guys. In this regard, we should give an example to the Slovakian supporting midfielder Lobotka, who led the whole game. All combinations started through this player. He controlled the ball and the situation, divorced the team about which flank to attack from - left or right. But our team, I repeat, did not have such a constructive player.

Vyacheslav Kulchitsky