Shakhtar in U21 national team: Ukraine lose to Macedonia

05-09-15 19:09:54

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On 5 September, the Ukraine U21 national team played their Euro 2017 qualifying match with Macedonia. FC Shakhtar Academy player Viktor Kovalenko took part in the game.

Macedonia U21 - Ukraine U21 - 1:0 (0:0)

Goal: 1:0 Radesci (90+3)

Macedonia U-21: Aleksovski, Zaykov, Velkoski, Murati, Bardi (Musliu, 90+2), Nicolov, (c), Denkovski (Mustafov, 75), Demiri, Radescu, Avramovski (Petkovski, 67), Markoski

Substitutes: Shishkovskiy, Ristovski, Imeri, Angelov

Head coach: Blagolya Milewski

Ukraine U21: Buschan, Duts, Burda, Miroshnichenko, Sobol, Mishnyov, Bliznichenko (Azatskiy, 67), Yurchenko (c), Petryakov, Kovalenko (Chachua, 59), Besedin (Khlyobas, 46)

Substitutes: Sheremeta, Luchkevich, Zinchenko, Bezborodko

Head coach: Serhiy Kovalets

Booked: Velkoski (20), Nicolov, (21) Murati (24), Burda (53)

Sent off: Burda (65, second booking), Velkoski (88, second booking)

Ukrainians started the game energetically. Serhiy Kovalets’ charges took control of the game from the opening minutes and were organizing positional attacking moves. Macedonia were playing roughly in defence and often committed fouls to stop the Ukraine attacks. Kovalenko and Petryak had decent chances to open the scoring, but the ball flew just wide of the goal post after their shots. The hosts found their rhythm of the game only midway through the first half. A dangerous shot was taken by Radesci – Buschan made a confident save. On 65 minutes, Ukraine were reduced to ten men. Burda got the second yellow card for his rough play. After that Macedonia went forward even more energetically, but would be denied chances by our national team’s tight defence. In the closing stages of the match, the referee sent off Velkoski. In the final minutes of the game, Ukraine went forward in numbers. Mishnyov took a powerful effort on 90 minutes – the ball went wide. After three minutes, Miroshnichenko tried his luck but missed the target too. And in the closing seconds Macedonia found a good opportunity to orchestrate a counterattack, which led to a Radesci goal.