The beginning of the formation of the vertical of the national teams: the autumn schedule of events of the youth national teams of Ukraine has been determined

18.08.2023 09:00

Photo of UAF press service

The Ukrainian Football Association has approved the schedule of events for the youth national teams of Ukraine for September-October 2023.

The U-18 youth national team (players born in 2005) led by Oleg Kuznetsov will take part in the international friendly tournament "Seoul Cup", which will be held from October 11 to 15 in Seoul. At these competitions, the Ukrainians will play against the teams of South Korea, Morocco and Vietnam.

The U-17 youth national team (players born in 2006) under the leadership of Yuriy Moroz will be based in the Czech Republic in September, where they will participate in the Vaclav Jezyk international friendly tournament from the 6th to the 10th. Ukraine's rivals include the USA, Turkey and Slovakia.

The youngest youth team, U-16 (players born in 2007), with whom Volodymyr Yezerskyi works, will have a training camp in Kyiv. The NTZ, during which the blue-yellow team will hold two sparring matches with the youth teams of UPL clubs, will be held from September 3 to 12.

Also, as previously reported, the youth national team of Ukraine, led by the Spanish specialist Unai Melgosa, will hold a training camp from September 3 to 12, during which they will play two matches: a test match against the German national team (September 8; Saarbrücken, Germany) and Euro 2025 qualifier (U-21) with Northern Ireland (September 12; Poprad, Slovakia).

The planned training sessions of the youth and youth teams will be the first stage of the implementation of the project of a single vertical of the national teams initiated by the coaching staff of Serhiy Rebrov. It aims to create a unified and effective professional growth path for young players from the youth teams to the first team. It is important to create conditions for football players to successfully complete this path.

We will remind that in order to establish cooperation from August 11 to 13, Uzhgorod held a premiere educational seminar for coaches of all national teams of Ukraine.

"Serhiy Rebrov set a goal to build a single vertical of youth and youth national teams of Ukraine up to the main team. He believes that everyone should work in a single format and according to the same ideas. Therefore, this seminar was the first step in the establishment of the specified structure," emphasized Serhiy Rebrov's assistant in the national team, Hleb Platov.

"Within this project, I am the coordinator of interaction between the U-17, U-19 and U-21 national teams, where I have the task of implementing players in more mature teams. In Uzhhorod, we worked precisely to launch the process initiated by Serhii Rebrov. We interacted with specialists who have been working at the UAF for a long time. We discussed the ideas of the game, work with the players who need to be prepared for the national team," said the coach of the youth team, Unai Melgosa.  

"Creating a single vertical of national teams is a complex and long-term process. But it is needed to systematically adapt all our national teams to a single player development algorithm, to lay a solid foundation for the future. An important element will also be the search and support of young football players - candidates for the national team, who were forced to go abroad with their families due to the full-scale Russian invasion. It is important that we can identify each of our young talents, and the innovative scouting department, which is currently being formed, will help UAF in this. In particular, a specialist will be attached to the national team of each age category, who will be involved in the search and identification of Ukrainian football players in Europe and the world," said the first vice-president of the UAF, Vadym Kostyuchenko.