The Ukrainian national soccer team’s upcoming match against Switzerland has been canceled after six Ukrainian players and one staff member tested positive for COVID-19. The decision threatens to undermine Ukraine’s final standing in the tournament.
Since the start of the new season, Ukrainian soccer has faced a streak of bad luck. Virtually all the country’s teams were hit by COVID-19. Now, the pandemic has incapacitated the country’s national team.
The game against Switzerland was set to determine who would remain among the top 16 European teams in the UEFA Nations League. Now it’s up to the UEFA, Europe’s top soccer body, to rule on the game’s outcome.
To remain in the top division, Ukraine needed to at least tie in the match. Now a win may be randomly assigned to one of the teams or a team could be assigned a 3-point victory, which could potentially knock Ukraine out of competition.
The Game
The match between Ukraine and Switzerland was scheduled to take place on Nov. 17 in Lucerne, Switzerland. It was canceled six hours before kick-off.
According to UEFA protocol, before each game, both teams and staffs must undergo polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests for COVID-19. If each team has 13 healthy players and one of them is the goalkeeper, the game can go forward. But the Swiss authorities disagreed.
On Nov. 15, three Ukrainian players — defensemen Eduard Sobol and Yevhen Makarenko and reserve goalkeeper Dmytro Riznyk — tested positive for COVID-19. After the second round of testing, three more players — Ruslan Malinovsky, Junior Moraes and Serhiy Kryvtsov — and Ivan Bashtovy, the national team’s fitness coach, contracted the virus.
Besides these six players, four other key players — midfielders Andriy Yarmolenko, Viktor Tsygankov, Serhiy Sydorchuk and Viktor Kovalenko — tested positive for COVID-19 on Nov. 13 and missed Ukraine’s previous game against Germany, which took place on Nov. 14. Ukraine lost that game 3:1.
To complicate matters, this was the second time that Moraes and Kryvtsov were diagnosed with COVID-19. Ukrainian medical staff believe that the tests were false positives. UEFA allowed the players to take part in the game.
However, after the latest round of tests, the Lucerne medical department ordered everyone in contact with those who contracted the virus to self-isolate.
The Ukrainian and Swiss soccer federations, as well as the UEFA, asked the local authorities to allow for the healthy players to play. However, no agreement was reached and the game was canceled.
To make matters worse, the game is vital for both teams.
The match between Ukraine and Switzerland is the last game in Group D of the UEFA Nations League A. The group consists of four teams – Germany, Spain, Ukraine and Switzerland – and the group winner will advance to the semi-finals, while the last team will be relegated to League B.
Ukraine is currently third with 6 points. Switzerland is fourth with 3 points. A Swiss victory 1:0, 2:1, or with more than two goals would send Ukraine to League B.
Nov. 18 is the last timeslot when the game can take place. If the game is not rescheduled to a later date, it will either be decided at random or, if one team is deemed responsible for the delay, the other side could be awarded a 3:0 technical victory.
Ukraine is trying to avoid both of those outcomes.
Ukraine’s loss to COVID
This is not the first time COVID-19 has affected Ukraine’s competition in the Nations League.
On Oct. 4, two main players of Ukraine’s champion Shakhtar team – veteran goalkeeper Andriy Pyatov and midfielder Taras Stepanenko – tested positive for COVID-19. Four days later, a total of 18 people – nine players and nine staff members – had also contracted the virus.
Without its key players from Shakhtar, Ukraine’s national soccer team still defeated Spain in Kyiv 1:0. The game was part of the fourth round of UEFA Nations League A.
A week later, using seven players under the age of 21 as starting players, Shakhtar beat Real Madrid 3:2 in the Spanish capital.
After Shakhtar players finally tested negative for COVID-19, it was Ukraine’s vice-champion Dynamo Kyiv that was hit by the pandemic. The team faced Spanish Barcelona and Shakhtar without key players, losing both games.
