Ivan Getsko: "Rebrov at Euro-2024 trusted the leaders of the Ukrainian national team too much"

Former Ukrainian national team striker Ivan Getsko assessed the performance of the Ukrainian national team at Euro-2024.

- I won't hide it: I hoped that the Ukrainian national team would at least make it to the quarterfinals, and here we have such a fiasco.

- But didn't we expect too much from the Ukrainian national team of the current model, because it had no big victories?

- Nevertheless, it had a lot of players who play in the top championships of the continent, it was only necessary to bring them to the decisive battles in optimal conditions.

- Why didn't it happen?

- It is better to ask manager Sergei Rebrov. It seems that he trusted the national team leaders too much, and they failed to cope with the burden of responsibility.

I am convinced that in the first match with the Romanians it was not worth releasing Andriy Lunin, Taras Stepanenko, Oleksandr Zinchenko, who have not had enough game practice at the club level recently.

But the worst thing is that when things went badly, it turned out that there were no performers in the ranks of the national team who would take over the game. After all, it wasn't the first time this happened to Mykola Matvienko, Mikhail Mudrik, Artem Dovbik, Viktor Tsygankov, Georgiy Sudakov.

- After the victory in the next match - against Slovakia, there was an impression that there was light at the end of the tunnel.

- With the Slovaks, the Ukrainians acted strategically ill-advised. When they managed to achieve a breakthrough and take the lead, they should have made every effort to bring it to a rout. But for some reason they started to play to keep the winning score. Did you really believe that in the final round Romanians and Slovaks, who were satisfied with a draw, for the sake of the Ukrainian team will play to win? Naive.

- Many experts say that the Ukrainian national team overestimated its strength.

- I agree. Many Ukrainians thought that at the Euro in Germany, they will have no shortage of big-name buyers, that multi-million dollar contracts will not go anywhere. This did not happen. Among the coveted newcomers were players from other national teams, and ours are again in line for recognition.

That is why it is very important to draw the right conclusions from this failure at Euro-2024. Otherwise, the current generation of Ukrainian national team players may be lost.

Oleg Didukh