Vitaliy Mykolenko: “You could say that the first 10 minutes in the match against Albania were perfect”

Defender of the Ukrainian national team Vitaliy Mykolenko commented on the match of the 6th round of the group stage of the Nations League 2024/2025 with Albania (2:1) and the thousandth day of war with the Russian invaders.

“I hadn’t counted the days of war before, but when I read this morning that the war has been going on for 1000 days, it was hard to think that people live in fear, under shelling, our military have been fighting for such a long time. It is very difficult for me morally...

I have mixed emotions from the match against Albania because the game was very tough. A challenging gathering with two away matches, but I am happy because we showed ourselves as a team, earned four points and took second place in the group. We completed this cycle of the Nations League well, although not perfectly. Serhiy Stanislavovych wished us luck in the clubs we are now switching to. I want to thank our fans who supported us from different parts of the world. We felt this support, saw the messages. Honestly — we tried very hard until the very end and earned three points.

You could say that the first 10 minutes of this match were perfect, but then... The first half, I think, was very good, but in the second, we probably psychologically understood that with a score of 2:0 we should play simpler. At the end, we could have scored three more goals and closed this match, but it turned out as it did. I think we won deservedly. We could have won with a bigger score, more calmly. But it ended up being such a nervous finish. The main thing is that we scored one goal more,” Vitaliy Mykolenko said.