The Serbia-Ukraine match will be played in Belgrade on Thursday, November 9. The meeting starts at 19.00. The match will be broadcast live on Xsport TV channel.

The Ukrainian women’s basketball team today begins its fight for access to the main part of the 2025 European Championship, which will take place in the Czech Republic, Italy, Germany and Greece. This fight will be very tough and our opponent in the first match will be the Serbian national team, one of the strongest national teams in European women’s basketball.

It is worth noting that our team was once again not very lucky in the draw for the continental championship. The Ukrainian national team, in addition to the very strong Serbians, received as opponents the national teams of Portugal and North Macedonia, which looked far from the best options in the qualifying baskets.

Let us remind you of the regulation. In the selection, 32 European teams are divided into eight groups of four teams each. Following a two-round tournament consisting of three game periods, the winner of each quadruple will qualify directly for the nearest EuroBasket, with the remaining slots going to the top four teams from the second-place finishers. An important point is that matches with the fourth team in the group will not be taken into account in the second place ranking. All host countries of the upcoming tournament have been assigned by FIBA ​​to a separate ninth group and will actually organize a friendly tournament among themselves.

The Ukrainian national team enters the new qualifying round with noticeable changes. First of all, these relate to the position of the head coach. After two consecutive unsuccessful qualifications for the European Championship in 2019 and 2021, the FBU management decided to end the cooperation with the team’s now former helmsman Srdjan Radulovic. In this article, Balkan’s place will be taken by Evgeniy Murzin, who does not need any additional introduction for all basketball fans in our country.

Evgeniy Viktorovich called the following basketball players to their first matches as head of the women’s national team:

Evgenia Putra (Caledonia, England), Miriam Uro-Nile (Friborg, Switzerland), Olga Maznichenko (Orly, France), Daria Dubnyuk (Slavia, Czech Republic), Vladislava Voloshina (Turan, Kazakhstan), Veronica Lubinets (Cluj, Romania) ) ), Kristina Filevich (Frankivsk-Prykarpattya), Tatiana Yurkevicius (Milan, Italy), Olga Boyko (Torun, Poland), Elizaveta Mitina (Tomiris, Kazakhstan), Victoria Balaban (“Neptūnas”, Lithuania)

The blue-yellow technical team had to make adjustments in practice due to the injuries of two players compared to the first announced list. And if the forced replacement of Ulyana Datsko with Kristina Filevich does not greatly affect the overall playing potential of our team, then the injury of one of the best European basketball players, Alina Yagupova, looks like a minor disaster.

The player, who has been the leader of the Ukrainian national team for a long time, suffered an ankle injury in the Turkish championship match against his club Mersin on November 4. This was Yagupova’s last match before leaving for the national team. Luckily the damage wasn’t serious. According to doctors’ predictions, Alina will be away from the field for 10-15 days, but the first qualifying period of EuroBasket 2025 coincides with this period. It goes without saying that without Yagupova our team will look much weaker. Meanwhile, the technical staff decided not to call anyone to replace the injured Alina, while the “blue-yellows” will have a missing squad of 11 people in the opening matches.

Our opponent in the Serbian national team is one of the strongest teams in Europe. Since the tenth year of the 21st century, Balkan players have been among those constantly competing for victory in the main tournaments of women’s basketball. His best results during this period were two victories in the continental championships (2015, 2021), third place at the 2016 Olympic Games and a bronze at EuroBasket 2019. At the 2023 European Championships in June, the Serbs finished fifth.

After the last major tournament, the head coach of the Balkans Marina Malkovich did not radically update the team. The expanded roster of the Serbian national team for the first two games of the EuroBasket 2025 qualifiers includes almost the entire squad from the last continental championship. Among them are such women’s basketball stars as Yvonne Anderson, Tina Kraisnik, Alexandra Cverdankich and others.

The match we will play with one of the best teams in Europe will be a very serious test for our national team. Basketball players of the Ukrainian national team will have to make every effort to achieve a positive result. Especially if we take into account the absence of Alina Yagupova. But in any case, the blue-yellow team will have to fight the Serbians at their best throughout the whole match, because at the end of the group stage the goal difference will be the most important factor, and in many respects this is the reason why. We missed the last two EuroBasket games. So we wish our girls to perform well and not ruin Evgeniy Murzin’s debut.

Sport.ua prediction: Serbian team victory

Sport.ua will carry out online text broadcast of the Serbia – Ukraine match.

9 November

Serbia – Ukraine

Portugal – North Macedonia

1.88 – 1.89 place bet money Zrobiti bet