Ukraine’s national football team slumped to a cruel 3-2 defeat in Amsterdam yesterday after staging a valiant would-be comeback against the Netherlands in their opening fixture at the Euro 2020 tournament.
A relatively dull first half, in which the Yellow and Blues had their fair share of the ball but lacked decision-making and creativity in attack, was followed by an electric five-goal second period.
Frank De Boer’s Netherlands team scored two in quick succession minutes after the break to leave Ukraine on the ropes, but Andriy Shevchenko’s men responded with renewed vigour and pulled the game back to 2-2.
However, heartbreak was to follow as Dutch right-back Denzel Dumfries capitalised on Ukraine’s poor defending and netted a winning goal five minutes from stoppage time.
Ukraine were consistently shaky at the back, particularly on their problematic left flank.
Goalkeeper Georgiy Buschan, who was chosen to start instead of team captain Andriy Pyatov, made several important stops to rescue his side’s defensive blunders before himself making a crucial error during Holland’s winning goal.
Georginio Wijnaldum and Wout Weghorst put the Dutch two up at the start of the second half. Both goals came as a result of Ukraine’s inability to defend their left side and clear the ball out of danger.
However, instead of giving up, the Yellow and Blues kept their heads up and fought back.
Andrew Todos, a UK-based sports journalist who writes the Zorya Londonsk blog covering Ukrainian football and attended the game, told the Kyiv Post that this was another example of “a change in mentality from Ukraine in recent years. After going behind they don’t slack off and have pulled off many a comeback in the past.”
In the 75th minute Andriy Yarmolenko, coming off the back of a frustrating season at London’s West Ham, weaved infield from the right flank, played the ball to Roman Yaremchuk before immediately receiving it back, took a few more steps and proceeded to curl the ball into the top corner of Maarten Stekelenburg’s net from 20 metres out.
Yarmolenko’s goal, his 41st for his country, stunned Holland, who were still reeling from the blow when Ruslan Malinovskyi lofted in an inch-perfect free kick from the left into the path of Yaremchuk, who scored 17 goals in the Belgian top division this season for Gent.
The striker met it powerfully with his head to beat the Dutch goalkeeper and pull Ukraine back onto level terms having been 2-0 down four minutes ago.
However, the Yellow and Blues failed to regroup defensively and ultimately paid the price. Dumfries had already put in a strong performance and was able to cap it off by heading in a winning goal for Holland after a bad pass from Buschan caused Olexandr Karavaev to lose the ball in a dangerous area.
According to Todos, the reasons for defeat were a mixture of nervousness and a mismatch in skill between the two teams.
“Holland have a lot of elite players, Ukraine just couldn’t match that,” he said.
This defeat places even more importance on the other two upcoming group games against North Macedonia and Austria, scheduled to take place in the Romanian capital, Bucharest, on June 17 and 21 respectively.
Both of these sides are seen as slightly easier opponents than Holland, but Ukraine must win at least one and possibly both of the games to have any chance of progressing into the knockout phase of the competition.
Todos remains upbeat about the team’s chances, believing that they “could reach the quarter-final if the (knockout phase) draw falls well but ultimately getting to the round of 16 would be seen as a positive.”
The Yellow and Blues will be hoping to generate headlines for their performances on the pitch, having already created plenty of international attention with their tournament uniform.
The depiction of a map of Ukraine on the front of the team’s shirts angered Russia, which occupied Crimea in 2014 and has since engaged in an overwhelmingly unsuccessful effort to have the territory internationally recognised as its own.
Russia’s football team lost 3-0 to Belgium in their opening Euro 2020 game.
