Oleksandr Zinchenko: "I myself cannot believe that this will be our third Euro"

28.03.2024 14:37

Photo of UAF press service

In the final match of the Euro-2024 qualification playoffs, the Ukrainian national team won a strong-willed victory over Iceland - 2:1 and went to the European Championship in Germany. 

Oleksandr Zinchenko, the all-rounder of the blue and yellow team, shared his emotions. 

"I am very proud of this moment. I am very proud to be Ukrainian, because today, in such a difficult time for our country, every time you wear a T-shirt with the Ukrainian coat of arms, you feel special emotions. I want to thank all the fans who have supported us all this time. Sometimes we may not have played the way someone wanted, but today the result came first. And thanks to your support, we got it.

I myself cannot believe that this will be our third Euro. I feel a little old, but as I said before, we are in the Euros. It will be a great experience for the whole team, because the national team is currently rebuilding, it has a lot of young players, and it will be a very big tournament for them. I also want to say that we lacked those players who are not in the national team today. But the support we felt from them and from all the people was very important. I just want to say thanks for that.

In principle, we expected such a game from the Iceland national team. That is, that they will sit a little on the defensive and at the same time use their counterattacks and standards. That is why we talked to each other before the game that we should bring these standards as little as possible to our gates. We have more or less managed this task. Yes, unfortunately, they were the first to miss. Here the individual skill of one of their players played a role, who should have been noticed because he scored three goals for Israel. But this is football. Despite this, we reacted very well to this goal in the second half and, thanks to the support of the stands, got an extremely important result.

It's always hard to get into games like this because the tension on the pitch is unbelievable. But to be honest, I felt a lot better when the fans started chanting my name while I was standing on the sidelines. It just gave me even more inspiration. I just wanted to make a result, do something useful for the team, giving all my strength. 

Andriy Shevchenko entered the national team's dressing room. He thanked for the result, for the fact that he received many congratulatory messages from people who are now giving their lives in Ukraine for our freedom. For us, this is simply extra motivation to go out on the field and give everything. After all, we understood that today the result will be in the first place, and a lot of people will be watching us. And, in particular, the military, who are now on the front line. We received a lot of messages from them. And there is no need to find any other motivation," Oleksandr Zinchenko said.