Duel Iceland – Ukraine It will be held in Istanbul on Sunday, August 13. The meeting starts at 18:00 Kiev time. The match will be broadcast live on Xsport TV channel.

Less than a day before the end of the opening match of the Olympic qualifiers against the Bulgarians, Vitaliy Stepanovsky’s team will take to the Istanbul park for the second time. The blue-yellows’ opponent will be the Icelandic national team, and this match will determine a lot, if not all, in terms of determining the semi-finalists of our quartet.

It was obvious at the beginning that the Turkish team was the clear favorite of the match, which was also confirmed on yesterday’s match day. But it was Ukraine and Iceland that were named the main contenders for the second pass. Accordingly, a win in a personal meeting will be a fundamental substitute for leaving the group for any of these teams.

Ukraine and Iceland in the first round played differently. The blue-yellows played an excellent 13-14 minutes of basketball at the beginning of the match against the Bulgarians and after the results they got, they found +25 points. And then our team seemed to have changed. Weak defence, wrong decisions on offense, misses from good positions forced Vitaliy Stepanovskiy’s men to save the game with less than two seconds left in regular time. Fortunately, Vyacheslav Petrov and Vyacheslav Kravtsov got their team out of a very difficult situation. In overtime, the Ukrainians continue to squeeze their opponent. It also helped us a lot that the Bulgarians were wrong. It does not gain additional five minutes with 1 in 8 (12.5%) application. The last siren recorded a difficult victory for the Ukrainian team – 80:71.

Iceland team lost the match. And he disappeared without luck and choice. The Turks, who had three NBA representatives on their roster before the break, ran ahead by 23 points, but unlike our team, they did not allow their opponent to return to the game. Confident victory of the hosts of the tournament – 99:72. However, how could it be otherwise?

It is worth noting that today’s match will be a kind of continuation of the Ukraine-Iceland duel that started in the 2023 World Cup qualifiers. Then, the two teams, who were drawn in the second stage of the elimination, won each other in the home field and brought the balance to a draw in personal matches. The away defeat of the blue-yellow team was especially painful. Having two representatives from the NBA in Reykjavik, our team had one of the worst fights in its history and managed to lose to the Islanders in overtime. In many ways, it was this defeat that deprived the then Ainars Bagatskis team of its ticket to the world forum.

The composition of the Icelanders has not changed much since the last meeting between the teams in mid-November last year. Their main star, Martin Hermansson, who is still recovering from a serious injury, is still missing. And without him, defender Elvar Fridriksson of Greek club “PAOK” and center Trygvi Hlinasson of Spanish “Bilbao” are carrying the burden of leadership. Perhaps the main threat to our team will come from the duet above. However, the most prolific player (20 points) in the match against the Turks was 19-year-old striker Orri Gunnarsson, who played in the local championship.

The duel with the Icelanders will be of great importance in the tournament. The victory with the simultaneous victory of the Turks against the Bulgarians, which will happen with a probability of 98%, will take the Ukrainian team to the semi-finals of the tournament ahead of schedule. However, a defeat will significantly reduce our team’s chances of leaving the group. So let’s wish Vitaly Stepanovsky and his team to secure one more match as part of the Olympic qualifiers on Sunday night.

Prediction Sport.ua: victory of the Ukrainian team

August 13

• Iceland – Ukraine
• Bulgaria – Türkiye

5.60 16.00 1.16 make a bet zrobbite bet

5.60 15.00 1.14 make a bet zrobbite bet