Former Dynamo footballer Mykola Morozyuk shared his thoughts on the reasons for the unsuccessful performance of the Ukrainian national team at Euro 2024.
- Why, in your opinion, did the national team perform so poorly at the Euros and now there is such a decline, which is already noticeable in the League of Nations?
- My personal opinion is that I consider myself to be one of those people who played a major role in the failure of the national team at the Euros. Because I, like most journalists, the press, experts, coaches, who just did not talk before the start of the European Championship, including me, said that we would beat Romania at least 3-0 before the game. We predicted who would score how many goals - Dovbyk three, because he is the best scorer in Spain, Lunin - number 1 in Real Madrid, Sudakov - 100 million, Mudryk - runs 100 meters in a second. It's a fantastic picture, and I'll say it again: I was one of them.
And when I watched this game, I started analyzing it after the game, I let it go through me, remembering how we got to the Youth European Championship in Denmark (2011 - note), where we had already won it in the press before the Euros started. And this was the mood within the team, where we completely failed. We were skated over by the Czechs, who were three heads weaker than us. But this is football life. That is, people were not ready for the game. By the time the Euros started, they were already... They even have this in their subconscious. They read these news, and even if you don't want to, it still relaxes you from the inside. And this was evident with Romania, because the following games showed something completely different.
- Didn't the friendly with Poland show when we lost?
- But it's a little different. A friendly match cannot be compared to an official one. The Euro Group is a completely different responsibility. I can also say that the Romanians are at least a head weaker than us, but... I don't communicate with any of the national team players at all and don't know what's going on. But I can simply say what I see and feel through the screen: these are problems inside. It seems to me that something is happening in the team itself, there is no harmony between the players, no unity.
- Is there a conflict between the coach and the players?
- Honestly, I don't know. It seems to me that there is no mutual understanding, no trust, no chemistry. When a coach comes in, and maybe some players want to play differently, they don't like the coach's idea, the coach doesn't believe in the players who used to be leaders. And everything starts to fall apart. I don't want to believe it, but it seems to me so.