However, this should be mitigated by three of those defeats coming at the hands of Spain and Germany combined in the Nations League A, with France, Poland and Switzerland the other nations to get the better of them. Since the European Championship qualifiers ended more than 18 months ago, Ukraine's form has been pretty poor, with Shevchenko's side losing six of their 14 matches during that timeframe. This is the first time that Ukraine have ever directly qualified for a European Championship, having automatically competed at Euro 2012 as co-hosts, before beating Slovenia in a play-off to reach Euro 2016.Īs such, there may be more pressure than usual on the national team to perform strongly at a major tournament, but as many nations have discovered in the past, doing the business in qualifying and a tournament are very different beasts indeed. As briefly alluded to, Ukraine were hugely impressive in qualifying for Euro 2020, finishing ahead of Portugal and Serbia to top Group B.ĭraws away to those two rivals for automatic qualification came alongside winning all other six games in the group, which proved enough to finish three points ahead of a Portugal side who many observers understandably feel are strong contenders to retain their title after winning Euro 2016.
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