Vitaliy Mykolenko is the 15th in history and the youngest player removed from the national team of Ukraine

30.03.2021 14:00

Photo by Yevhen Kraws

Vitaliy Mykolenko earned the 17th withdrawal in the biography of the national team of Ukraine. But the defender became only the 15th football player to withdraw from the field in our team. After all, this happened twice with Oleksandr Kucher and Taras Stepanenko.

Both, by the way, earned one red card in 2013 - the most productive withdrawal in our history. Five times Mykhailo Fomenko's wards received such harsh sanctions. Four of them are in the qualifying round of the 2014 World Cup, which we almost got to, but in the end still lost in the butt matches of France. Earning on withdrawal in each match.

However, the record for the national team of Ukraine remains the match on November 13, 1999, when two of our players - Dmytro Parfenov and Andriy Husin - received a red card at once. This was the first meeting in the Euro 2000 play-offs with Slovenia. We lost - 1: 2, but failed to win back in Kyiv.

It is also worth noting that the withdrawal from our team did not always lead to a loss of points. Sometimes it was possible to keep the score. And sometimes - to win. This was the case in November 2011 with Austria in Lviv (2: 1), but the most memorable game was away in Montenegro in June 2013. In the 45th minute, German Manuel Grefe withdrew Roman Zozulya, and in the 52nd minute Denis Garmash put Ukraine ahead - 1: 0. On the 66th the referee equalized the teams, and with a score of 2: 0 removed another Montenegrin. The result was a great victory - 4: 0, which weighed a lot in strategic terms.

And Vitaliy Mykolenko went down in history as the youngest removed player of the national team of Ukraine - at the age of 21 years and 303 days. At the age of 22, Yevhen Pokhlebayev (1994) and Viktor Leonenko (1992) were removed, and at the age of 23, Roman Zozulya (2013) and Taras Stepanenko (2013) were removed. The oldest player with a red card is Vladyslav Vashchuk (31 years and 163 days).

The last 10 withdrawals in the national team of Ukraine