“Ukraine vs. Albania: everything you need to know about the decisive match of the League of Nations Today at 21:45, the national team of Ukraine will play Albania in the last match of the League of Nations. A win could see the team finish second in the group and give them a shot at promotion to the A-League.”, — write on: unn.ua
Ukraine has never played in this arena, but back in 2005, at the “Kemal Stafa” stadium, on the site of which “Air Albania” was built, the Ukrainian national team played the only match on Albanian soil, defeating the hosts in the selection of a historic for us WC-2006 – 2:0.
The match can be watched live on the Megogo platform, as well as on T2 digital broadcasting, the match of the national team of Ukraine will be shown live by regional TV channels “Suspilne”. It is already known that Ukraine will play the match in a yellow kit. Albanians will play in red.
For the match against the Albanians, the head coach of the national team made 4 substitutions: in the goal – Anatolii Trubin, in the center of the defense – Ilya Zabarnyi and Mykola Matvienko, on the flanks of the defense – Vitaliy Mykolenko and Yukhym Konoplia. Ivan Kalyuzhny will play in the support zone instead of Volodymyr Brazhk, in the center of the midfield will be Georgy Sudakov and Oleksandr Zinchenko, who replaces Mykola Shaparenka. On the flanks of the attack – Mykhailo Mudryk and Oleksiy Hutsuliak, who replaces Oleksandr Zubkov. Artem Dovbyk will be replaced by Roman Yaremchuk at the point of attack.
Forward Vladyslav Vanat, who missed the previous match against Georgia due to injury, was not included in the application.
The day before, national team coach Serhiy Rebrov said that Vanat is recovering, but did not say for sure whether he will be able to take part in the match.
“Vanat is recovering. We’ll see. There are still 24 hours. Vlad came to the national team with the desire to play. We didn’t understand how long it would take him to recover from the injury. He wants to play for our country. There is still time and I hope he will be ready “, said Rebrov.
At a minimum, Ukraine needs to beat the Albanians in order to overtake them in the standings, which will allow them to take third place, which will give them the opportunity to play matches to keep their registration in League “B” with the team that took second place in League “C”.
Also, if the Czech Republic wins over Georgia, and Ukraine over Albania, our national team will occupy the second place, which will allow us to play in head-to-head matches for entry into League “A” with the team that took third place from League “A”.
In the previous match, the Albanian national team narrowly beat Ukraine (2:1). This victory was the first in the history of Albania against the Ukrainians. In total, Ukraine and Albania played 7 games, in which, as already mentioned, the Albanians won once, in one match it was a draw, and in the rest Ukraine won.
In this confrontation, bookmakers give a slight advantage to Ukraine – 2.3 coefficient. 3.2 for Albania’s win and 3.25 for a draw.
The day before, the forward of the national team, Roman Yaremchuk, emphasized that the Albanian national team is quite a powerful team, but the football players will focus on victory.
“We play away, such matches are always different from home matches. Albania is quite a strong team. They have a good striker, a good defensive line, there is discipline in the defense. We also have enough qualified football players who are able to decide the fate of the match. We will focus on that that we need a victory. Let’s hope that there will be goals in order to realize them. That it will affect us psychologically, and everyone the football player relieved a little of his stress, felt confident and showed his best game,” Yaremchuk said.
Portuguese Joao Pineira, who has already faced Ukraine and Ukrainian teams, has been appointed as the main referee for the match. In particular, in September 2022, he officiated the Armenia-Ukraine League of Nations match, in which Ukraine recorded a crushing 5:0 victory.
At the beginning of October of this year, the Portuguese worked on the match of the group stage of the Champions League between Shakhtar Donetsk and Italian Atalanta, in which the Donetsk team suffered a crushing defeat – 0:3. In general, the Portuguese has already refereed six matches involving Ukrainian teams.
We will remind
The national team of Ukraine drew 1:1 with the team of Georgia in the match of the fifth round of the UEFA Nations League group stage. The meeting took place at the Adjarabet Arena stadium in Batumi.