On the first day of the summer season, under normal circumstances, football fans are hardly prepared to speculate about the chances of their football team winning some super important games, but a crazy 2022 has changed our usual schedule of life, not just with its presence. The first winter World Cup in Qatar. The reason why Oleksandr Petrakov’s team could not complete the World Cup play-offs on time was full-scale aggression against Ukraine, so the showdown with Scotland on the rival field was postponed until the summer part of the season.

Naturally, the Blue-Yellows did not end up out of business in mid-May, playing three simultaneous friendly matches against Borussia Mönchengladbach (2:1), Italian Empoli (3:1) and Croatian Rijeka. This factor somewhat lessened the obvious factor of the physical tone advantage of competitors in the British Isles. And Scotland last took the field over two months ago, led by Steve Clark.

The starting fifteen minutes of the match were exactly the playing time that most experts were worried about before the game even started. Until the end it was impossible to predict exactly how our team will behave at this time, and what we saw after the kickoff only confirmed their fears. Ukraine started the game very tense, while the opponents tried to put strong pressure on our players at any point on the pitch.

It is clear that it was impossible to do without non-essential mistakes during the transitions, but this did not result in any significant aggravation on Bushchan’s gates. And then the pressure subsided, and then we saw Petrakov’s team in a confident combination game, even in front of someone else’s free kick, albeit two players with a yellow card.

For us it was only a matter of time to create a scoring chance, but it is another thing to encourage our own ideas and turn them into any result on the scoreboard. With this, the beginning of Yaremchuk’s Yarmolenko had some difficulties. But in the end, even with this Ukraine managed to cope. As early as 33 minutes Andrey stopped Ruslan Malinovsky’s brilliant shot from his own half in front of someone else’s free kick and already kicked the goalkeeper out with a second touch.

The Blue-Yellows had a moderately low block with the time remaining for the timeout, with the main task being to keep Robertson on the left flank of the opponent’s attack, which sometimes caused problems, but none of the Scots were offended. buschan Petrakov’s team was not very active in attacks at the time and chose tactics to gain a situational advantage.

Starting the second half with a goal was a very important step for our team as the opponents started to move into a foursome formation which gave them some space in the middle line. This was also important, because with Karavaev’s successful completion of his serve, Ukraine, through Yaremchuk’s efforts, gave him some more free playing time before the opponents launched a hellish attack on our property.

You should not hide the fact that the “blue-yellows” are fighting against their opponents’ constant attempts to serve inside the penalty area for a certain period of time. Unfortunately, our goalkeeper Georgiy Bushchan eventually got a little tired during the interceptions and as a result we saw an obvious mistake in his performance in the 79th minute. It’s like finishing off McGregor.

While the last minutes of the match were played in sumo format, the Scots continued to play in a vertical style while Ukraine tried to catch up with their opponents with counter attacks. In the end, only Artem Dovbik had three chances to finish off the home side, but he played on our nerves until the last seconds of the stoppage. It’s good that at least he managed to make a one-on-one exit on the third try.

The final whistle of Dutch referee Danny McKelly gave the Ukrainian team the opportunity to play in the decisive match on the way to the 2022 World Cup. Team Steve Clark unsuccessfully finished the qualifying round.

2022 World Cup qualifying playoffs.

Scotland – Ukraine – 1:3

McGregor (79) – Yarmolenko (33), Yaremchuk (49), Dovbik (90+5)

Dykes (44), McGinn (59) – Yaremchuk (5), Malinovsky (11), Shaparenko (84)

Scotland: Gordon, Cooper (Hendry, 68), Henley, McTominay, Robertson, Hickey, McGregor, Gilmour (Armstrong, 68), McGinn, Dykes (Christie, 46), Adams.

Ukraine: Bushchan, Mikolenko, Matvienko, Zabarny, Karavaev, Stepanenko, Tsygankov (Mudrik, 72), Zinchenko, Malinovsky (Shaparenko, 72), Yarmolenko (Zubkov, 78), Yaremchuk (Dovbik, 78).

Judge: Danny Makkeli (Netherlands)

Hampden Park Stadium (Glasgow, Scotland)​

SCOTLAND – UKRAINE. TEXT BROADCAST OF THE MATCH