The European Championship tournament co-hosts in football will be debutants in this great event. The only tournament in which Ukraine participated as an independent state was the World Cup in Germany in 2006. There, after two wins in the group stage the team was promoted to 1/8 of the finals by beating the Swiss on penalties and then to the quarter-finals where the team managed to cope with the later winner, Italy.
Due to the fact that the Yellow-Blues are guaranteed to start in the main event, they played friendly matches. Their balance from the beginning of 2011 is four wins with lower notes teams, three draws with Romania, Sweden and Germany and five losses with, inter alia, Italy, France and Uruguay.
The leader of the team is, without a doubt, Andriy Shevchenko, a striker of Dynamo Kiev, who played over a hundred meetings for the national team. Important players in the team will also be Dmytro Czyhrynski,a former player of Barcelona, Artem Milewski, Andriy Voronin, Oleh Husiew, and Anatoliy Tymoshchuk.
Oleh Blokhin’s team will play in the last D group, challenging with Sweden, France and England. It seems that Ukraine, 55th in the ranking, does not have much chance to advance to the next phase, however, because they are the co-host of the tournament they can make a pleasant surprise for their fans.
Ukraine Euro 2012 Squad
Goalkeepers: Oleksandr Goryainov (FC Metalist Kharkiv), Maxym Koval (FC Dynamo Kyiv), Andriy Pyatov (FC Shakhtar Donetsk).
Defenders: Bohdan Butko (FC Illychivets Mariupil), Olexandr Kucher (FC Shakhtar Donetsk), Taras Mikhalik (FC Dynamo Kyiv), Yaroslav Rakitskiy (FC Shakhtar Donetsk), Yevhen Selin (FC Vorskla Poltava), Yevhen Khacheridi (FC Dynamo Kyiv), Vyacheslav Shevchuk (FC Shakhtar Donetsk).
Midfielders: Olexandr Aliyev (FC Dynamo Kyiv), Denys Garmash (FC Dynamo Kyiv), Oleh Gusev (FC Dynamo Kyiv), Yevhen Konoplyanka (FC Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk), Serhiy Nazarenko (SC Tavriya Simferopol), Ruslan Rotan (FC Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk), Anatoliy Tymoshchuk (FC Bayern München), Andriy Yarmolenko (FC Dynamo Kyiv).
Forwards: Andriy Voronin (FC Dinamo Moskva), Marko Dević (FC Shakhtar Donetsk), Artem Milevskiy (FC Dynamo Kyiv), Yevhen Seleznyov (FC Shakhtar Donetsk), Andriy Shevchenko (FC Dynamo Kyiv).
Ukraine Euro 2012 Group Matches
Monday, June 11, 2012 Ukraine v Sweden (20:45 CET in Kiev)
Friday, June 15, 2012 Ukraine v France (20:45 CET in Donetsk)
Tuesday, June 19, 2012 England v Ukraine (20:45 CET in Donetsk)
Euro 2012 Quick Facts
- Best World Cup Result: Quarter Finals (2006)
- Best European Championship Result: N/A
- Record Scorer: Andriy Shevchenko (46 goals from 1995 – present)
- Most Capped Player: Anatoliy Tymoshchuk (114 from 2000 – present)
- Coach: Oleh Blokhin
- Captain: Andriy Shevchenko
