Myron Markevych: "Rebrov should rely on experience. Stepanenko, Yarmolenko, Zinchenko should be thrown into the fight"

On September 10, the national football team of Ukraine will play the second match in the League of Nations in Prague - against the Czechs. Honored coach of Ukraine Myron Markevych in a conversation with a correspondent of Sport.ua told what Serhiy Rebrov's wards lacked in the opening confrontation with the Albanians, shared his expectations from tomorrow's match with the hosts:

- To be honest, I expected a slightly different starting lineup against the Albanians. After all, it was obvious that the opponent would act from the defense, and therefore the appearance from the first minutes of Andriy Yarmolenko, with his ability to exacerbate the situation on his flank and Oleksandr Zinchenko, who can make an accurate last pass, accurately punch from a distance, begged for it. Perhaps, the appearance of Taras Stepanenko would have been appropriate, unfortunately, the match with the Albanians showed that no one else knows how to take the ball away from us. Full-back Volodymyr Brazhko failed to cope with these functions, and other midfielders played poorly as well.

- The Ukrainians had a fairly noticeable advantage in ball control, but it did not bring any significant dividends. Why?

- This is exactly the case when ball control was only for statistics. Our team did practically nothing near the visitors' possession to make life difficult for them. The closer to the goal, the slower the nominal hosts acted, although it should be the other way around. That's why the Albanians could easily solve the simple moves of the Ukrainians. Although why not immediately press the opponents when they lost the ball, forcing them to make wrong decisions. This was not done precisely because of the reluctance to play in the qualifiers. And when the Albanians moved to our half of the field without resistance, they boldly engaged in martial arts, pushing the game away from their goal.

By the way, it is possible that everything could have ended happily for the Ukrainians if they had not allowed the Albanians to quickly equalize. This gave the opponent more confidence.

- After the match, there was a discussion in the media among experts about whether the absence of the injured Mykhailo Mudryk and Artem Dovbyk had affected the game.

- I think not. After all, they act in a similar manner to Vladyslav Kabayev and Roman Yaremchuk. In addition, it is not known in what condition Mudryk is, who does not have enough playing practice at the club level, while Kabayev is now making a splash at Dynamo.

- But it was Kabayev's positional mistake that cost our team the second missed goal.

- That game episode was not without a collective shortcoming, although it is difficult to understand why Kabaev did not simply insure Vitaliy Mykolenko, who rushed to help goalkeeper Anatoliy Trubin.

- How can we explain the Albanians' tangible advantage when playing standard positions, although they do not have grenadiers in their team?

- Home-made preparations and the right choice of position. Trubin also made the defenders nervous, as he did not act decisively on the outs, although with his height he should have been the master of his possessions.

- Tomorrow, the Ukrainians will have to sort out their relations with the Czechs, among whom there are many high performers whose "trump card" is top duels.

- I hope that our coaching staff will find strong counterarguments against the hosts' attempts to impose a power struggle on the "second floor". First of all, thanks to a well-established safety net.

- After the unexpected defeat of the Czechs in Tbilisi and our failure with the Albanians, tomorrow's match can be safely called the final one.

- That is why we need to take advantage of the fact that it will be difficult for the Czechs to recover quickly after such a knockdown. Since the significance of this match will be great, perhaps Sergei Rebrov should rely on his experience. As for me, Stepanenko, Yarmolenko, and Zinchenko should be thrown into the battle. Each of them is not only a quality player, but also a fighter. Tomorrow, a lot will depend on who has the stronger character. I believe in our national team, that it will please us with cohesion and skill at a key moment.

Dmytro Verbinsky