Historic match: today Ukraine will face Belgium in the final match for reaching the Euro 2024 playoffs

Today, the national team of Ukraine in Stuttgart, Germany, will meet with the national team of Belgium in the third round of the group stage of Euro 2024. this match will be somewhat historic, because Ukraine and Belgium have never played each other. The match will also determine whether our national team will continue its journey to the euro. UNN decided to tell about the previous performances of the teams at the European Championships, the favorites of bookmakers, as well as where to watch the match. 

Stadium, referee team, broadcast

Today, at 19:00, The National Team of Ukraine will play a decisive match that will determine whether our team will continue to fight further at Euro 2024. as part of the third round of the group stage, our guys will play against the formidable Belgian national team in Stuttgart, Germany, at the stadium of the team of the same name-Arena Stuttgart. 

For the first time in the history of the national teams of Ukraine and Belgium, they will finally meet in the decisive match of Group E Euro 2024. also, for the first time in the history of the European Championships, all four teams have three points in the asset before the final round of the group stage, and both teams will strive to win in order to take an important first place and get as a reward a potentially easier next opponent-one of the teams that finishes third in their group.

The match can be viewed on local public TV channels, except for OTT services. On the internet, the match will be shown exclusively by the MEGOGO media service.

45-year-old Englishman Anthony Taylor was appointed as the main referee of the match. He will be assisted on the lines by Gary Beswick and Adam Nunn. Sweden's Glenn Nyberg will serve as the fourth referee. England's Stuart Atwell will be responsible for the VAR system, while his compatriot David Coote and Germany's Marco Fritz will be assistants.

Taylor has already judged the match of the Ukrainian national team in 2019, when Andriy Shevchenko's team beat Portugal in qualifying for Euro 2020 (2:1). In that match, Taylor removed Taras Stepanenko in the second half, showing him a second yellow card for playing with his hand in the penalty area, which allowed Portuguese forward Cristiano Ronaldo to reduce the gap in the match from the penalty spot, but this did not prevent Ukraine from winning and reaching the euro ahead of schedule. 

Euro start 

Belgium, like Ukraine, had a poor start to the euro. In the first match, the national team of Ukraine defeated the national team of Romania with a score of 3:0. 

Ukraine loses to Romania in the first match of Euro 2024Jun 17 2024, 03:19 PM • 18258 views

Ukraine in the second match against Slovakia also started the match unsuccessfully, conceding already in the 17th minute. But thanks to goals from Mykola Shaparenko and Roman Yaremchuk, the Blue-yellows managed to win a strong-willed victory over the Slovaks. 

Euro 2024: Ukraine defeated Slovakia 2-1Jun 21 2024, 03:13 PM • 15718 views

The Belgian national team also sensationally lost in the first match against Slovakia. The Slovaks managed to score in the opening match. In the 7th minute of the match, Slavia Prague forward Ivan Schrantz opened the scoring in the match, which turned out to be the final one. 1: 0 in favor of Slovakia. 

We can say that the Slovaks were somewhat lucky. According to statistics, Belgium had to score at least two goals (1.97 expected goals), while Slovakia had only 0.58 xG. 

In the second round, Belgium met with the offender of Ukraine - the Romanian national team. In this match, the Belgians confidently defeated the Romanians with a score of 2:0. The Belgians managed to quickly take control of the game and score at the beginning of the match. Already in the second minute of the match, thanks to a goal from midfielder Juri Thielemans, who was assisted by Romelu Lukuk, the Red Devils managed to take the lead. 

On the 63rd day of the match, Lukaku hit the exact right pass, like Kevin De Bruyne, who broke through the penalty area of the Maidan from the left lower cut. However, arbitr skasuvav took a steal through an offside pass from a forward. 

By the way, this is Lukaku's second goal at the euro, which is canceled by the referee. In the match against the Slovaks, the striker of the Italian "Roma" after a corner kick scored a goal, but the referee also canceled it due to offside. 

At the end of the match, in the 80th minute, the captain of the Belgian national team Kevin De Bruyne managed to double the advantage of Belgium and set the final score in the Match-2:0. 

History of confrontations and options for leaving the group

This match promises to be legendary, because Ukraine and Belgium have never met in their history in official matches. 

Now the situation in Group E after two rounds is as follows: 

1. Romania - 2 matches, 3 points, goal difference 3:2;

2. Belgium - 2 matches, 3 points, goal difference 2:1;

3. Slovakia-2 matches, 3 points, goal difference 2:2;

4. Ukraine-2 matches, 3 points, goal difference 2: 4. 

Ukraine is inferior to all opponents in Group E due to the worst goal difference (-2).

It should be noted that the best teams that took third places also advance to the 1/8 finals. That is, to get Ukraine out of the group, you can take third place, but there are several scenarios. 

Scenario # 1: Ukraine needs to beat Belgium and expect Romania to lose in the match against Slovakia, because our national team then scores 6 points, and the Slovaks are lower than us because of a personal meeting in which they lost to us. 

Scenario # 2: Ukraine can go further and from second place if Romania beats Slovakia. To do this, you need to beat Belgium and then Ukraine and Romania will have six points each, in personal meetings the Romanians will be the first.

Scenario # 3: Ukraine can draw with Belgium, but Romania and Slovakia must not draw. Ukraine can also lose to Belgium, but we need a mandatory victory for Romania over Slovakia. Thus, our guys can take third place in the group, which can guarantee an exit from the quartet, but it is still important to remember that third place does not guarantee Ukraine access to the Euro 2024 playoffs." Blue-Yellow " should get into the top four third places from all groups, which now looks like this: 

Netherlands - 5 points, 4:4 (goal difference) - group D;

Slovakia - 3 points, 2:2 - group E;

Slovenia - 3 points, 2:2 - group C;

Hungary - 3 points, 2:5 - group A;

Croatia - 3 points, 3:6 - group B;

Czech Republic - 2 points, 2:3 - group F.

Thus, Croatia is definitely going home, and the Czech Republic still has a chance to make it to the 1/8 finals. The rest of the third-placed teams in their groups have already played all their matches in the group stage.

Command representation

Belgium. according to the updated FIFA ranking, the Belgian national team remained in third place. Only the French national team and the reigning world champions - Argentina-are ahead. The head coach is a young Italian specialist Domenico Tedesco, who at one time worked with various German teams, including RB Leipzig, with whom he took the German Cup in the 2021/2022 season.  

In the ranking of the most expensive teams at Euro 2024, Belgium ranks 8th-the transfer price is 584.5 euros. The most expensive players of the team are the forward of the English "Manchester City" Jeremy docu (65 million euros), the forward of the German "RB Leipzig" Louis Openda (50 million euros) and midfielders of the English "Manchester City" Kevin De Bruyne and "Everton" Amadou Onan, who is a teammate of our Vitaly Mikolenko - 50 million euros each. 

Pickford, Onana and Mikolenko 

Mikolenko at a press conference noted that he and Onana are not good friends, but are good teammates. 

"We are not good friends, but good teammates. If we both play in the match between Ukraine and Belgium, I will fight and hit him on the legs every time. In the next match, we will not be friends or teammates. Transfermarkt estimates it at 50 million euros. This is an impressive player. My 28 million? Yes, there is a difference," Mikolenko said on the eve of the match with the Belgians. 

Also with De Bruyne, he once played Alexander Zinchenko in Manchester City, which now defends the colors of another English club - Arsenal in London. 

De Bruyne and Zinchenko 

We will add that earlier in the network "walked" a meme in which they compared De Bruyne and Zinchenko because of their similar appearance. Zinchenko posted a photo on Instagram with De Bruyne during a training session and suggested that his followers come up with a caption to the photo. Fans immediately began to invent various captions: "when your father tells you to work harder in training", "brother helps with homework", "Kevin decided not to run far to the Mirror", "Why are two identical people in the photo?", "Father trains son". 

"He (De Bruyne - ED.) is the best assistant of the Premier League, The Best Player of the Belgian national team, the captain. I hope that he will not score and assist in the match with us, then I will be happy," Mikolenko said before the game with Belgium. 

It is worth recalling that this year the main star and one of the best goalkeepers in the world, Thibaut Courtois, who is a teammate and competitor for a place in the goal of Real Madrid Andrey Lunin, probably did not go to the euro with Belgium. 

Lunin and Courtois

Courtois suffered an injury all season, so he managed to recover only at the end of the season, which did not prevent him from becoming the winner of the Champions League with Real Madrid. 

Spanish "Real" became the winner of the UEFA Champions LeagueJun 1 2024, 10:29 PM • 29274 views

"Everything has already been said on this topic. I don't want you to have an eye-for-eye situation. We are focusing on players who are in good shape," Tedesco said at the end of April, when it was not yet known whether Courtois would be able to recover. 

There is also a version that Courtois did not go to the championship because of a conflict with Tedesco, and not because of an injury. It was reported that the conflict arose because of the captain's armband for the match against Austria. 

Courtois left the national team in June 2023 after the match with Austria and before the game with Estonia after Romelu Lukaku, not him, received the captain's armband in the absence of the main captain Kevin De Bruyne.

Another interesting fact is that Courtois has a conflict not only with Tedesco, but also with De Bruyne. All because De Bruyne's girlfriend Carolyn Leinen cheated on him with Courtois. 

It should be noted that it was Courtois who supported Lunin after the crushing defeat to Romania. After the game, Courtois contacted Lunin and expressed words of support for the Ukrainian, noting that "this can happen to anyone.

In addition, Lunin was supported by Real Madrid coach Carlo Ancelotti, as well as players David Alaba and Daniel Carvajal.

Taras Stepanenko also singled out Jeremy DOCA on the eve of the match with Belgium, noting that this is a dangerous player. 

"I like Jeremy Doku, he has a good dribble, a pass. he has shown a lot in attack in recent matches. This is a very dangerous player," Stepanenko said. 

Doku vs Mykhailychenko in the Europa League 1/8 final match Rennes-Shakhtar 

The most matches for the national team were played by the defender of the Belgian "Anderlecht" Jan Vertonghen - 154 games. The best goalscorer of the team is Romelu Lukaku - 85 goals to his credit. 

Lukaku and Vertonghen 

Belgium has played at the Euro 6 times. For the first time this happened back in 1972, where it took part as an organizing country. This championship was unique, because only 4 teams took part in it - Belgium, the Federal Republic of Germany, the USSR and Hungary. 

Also, starting from this championship, two player substitutions were allowed during the match. 

At this Euro 1972, Belgium was eliminated in the semifinals from the future champions - the German national team (1:2), and in the match for the third place they beat the Hungarians - 2:1, which allowed them to win bronze. The Germans beat the USSR in the final - 3:0. 

The next time the Belgians played at the euro was 8 years later, where they managed to make it to the final, but lost again to Germany - 1:2. thus, the Belgians won the "Silver" of the Championship, which is the highest achievement of the national team at the European Championships. 

Subsequent performances were unsuccessful. At Euro 1984, the Belgians failed to overcome the group stage and played at the next Euro only 16 years later - at Euro 2000, where they also failed to get out of the group. 

Then again a long 16 years of waiting and the Belgian national team goes to France for Euro 2016. 

The New success of the Belgian national team is associated with its "golden generation": most of the national team's players represent stronger European Championships - Thibaut Courtois, Vincent Kompany, Jan Vertonghen, Toby Alderweireld, Eden Hazard, Kevin De Bruyne, Romelu Lukaku and others. 

However, even with such a stellar squad, the Belgians sensationally lost in the quarterfinals at Euro 2016 to The "Dark Horse" of the Championship-the Welsh national team (1:3). 

At Euro 2020, Belgium also flew out in 1/4, losing to the future winners-the Italian national team. 

Ukraine. The national team of Ukraine is much lower than Belgium in the FIFA ranking. In the updated ranking, our national team lost two positions and moved from 22nd place to 24th. Ukraine is among the top 10 most expensive teams in Euros with a total transfer price of 379 million euros. The most expensive players of the national team are: Arsenal midfielder Alexander Zinchenko (38 million euros), Girona striker Artem Dovbik, Chelsea striker Mikhail Mudrik and Shakhtar Donetsk midfielder Georgy Sudakov - 35 million euros each. 

The current player of the Ukrainian national team, Andriy Yarmolenko, takes second place in the goalscoring race with 46 goals. In the first place is Andriy Shevchenko, who has 48 goals. 

In addition, the player is in second place in terms of the number of matches played for the national team - 120. in first place - Anatoly tymoshchuk (144 games for the national team). 

The national team of Ukraine played three times at the euro. For the first time, Ukraine played in the final stage of the European Championship in 2012. Then Ukraine automatically qualified for the group stage, as the host country together with the Polish national team.

For the second time, Ukraine played at the euro in 2016, where it was eliminated without winning a single match in the group with Germany, Poland and Northern Ireland, taking last place.

The best result was the performance of our national team at Euro 2020, which was postponed for a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe. Then the national team of Ukraine played in a group with the national teams of the Netherlands, Austria and North Macedonia, where it took third place, which allowed it to reach the 1/8 finals.

In 1/8, thanks to the victory over Sweden (2:1), Ukraine entered 1/4, where, unfortunately, it lost to the future finalist - England (4:0).

bookmakers ' favorite 

Analysts are expected to consider Belgium as the leaders in the confrontation, which is given a coefficient of 1.79 to win. Ukraine's victory is estimated at 4.56, and a draw is given at 3.96. 

Bookmakers also gave a forecast for Ukraine's exit from the group. In particular, that Ukraine will take the first place in the group, the coefficient is 8, the second place - 6, the third place - 2.95, and the last is estimated at 2.15. 

You can bet that Ukraine will reach the playoffs with a coefficient of 1.85. the opposite result is 1.95.