Head coach of the Belgian national team Domenico Tedesco told what he expects from the match of his team against Ukraine in the 3rd round of the group stage of Euro 2024, which will be held today in Stuttgart, and also listed the strengths of the Ukrainian national team.
"I grew up here in Stuttgart, so for me the upcoming match will be special. This stadium is where I had my first soccer experience as a child.
We know that to get out of the group we only need one point, but we will take to the pitch with the desire to win.
As for our opponent, we have seen several matches of the Ukrainian national team, and I can say that it is a good team, which in the qualifying cycle of Euro-2024 created problems for England and Italy, and in a recent friendly match - Germany, against whom the Ukrainians looked good.
The Ukrainian national team can play with variety, it has a lot of strong qualities, especially counterattacks. In addition, our opponent likes to possess the ball. The Ukrainian national team has very fast wingers. And in general, there are a lot of good players in its squad - Stepanenko, Mudryk, Tsygankov, Dovbik, Sudakov.... Here we should also mention the goalkeepers.
There is a lot of talk about the fact that we had 30 hours less to recover from the previous match than the Ukraine national team. But it is not a problem. Three days of rest is quite enough. At the same time, the Ukraine national team traveled from Wiesbaden to the match venue, and we are 20 minutes away from Stuttgart by bus.
The match Slovakia - Romania? It would be unwise of us to ignore its current score, but we don't want to focus on that throughout the game. We'll see what the situation will be minutes before the end of the match and then we'll decide how to manage the end of the game," Tedesco said during the pre-match press conference.