Head coach of the youth national team of Ukraine U-15 Volodymyr Samborsky summed up the results of the training camp and participation in the international tournament.

The youngest youth national team of Ukraine (footballers born no older than 2011) triumphantly performed at the UEFA Development Tournament held in Portugal. The blue and yellow team, having won three matches, took first place.

After returning home, the head coach of our team, Volodymyr Samborsky, answered questions from the official UAF website.

Mr. Volodymyr, what are your impressions of the performance of your wards?

— We studied the Portuguese national team well after the first two matches. Therefore, it was clear how to play against them and what to expect from the opponents. But the main thing was to prove to the guys that such strong opponents are not worth fearing. You need to believe in yourself and impose your game. Perhaps, in technical terms, the Portuguese are better than our players, but this is our long-standing problem when children are just starting to play football. Unfortunately, we still do not emphasize what we need to work on from the very beginning.

However, I would like to note that this difference is not critical and with a great desire, these gaps can be filled. I would like to emphasize once again that it is important for our guys at this age to believe in themselves and change their mentality. Then a lot will come out of it.

Of course, it's nice to win in such a strong tournament, but there's still a lot to work on. We need to play our game. It was obvious that our players were too nervous, even those who play abroad.

But three victories were achieved...

— Yes. And I want to say that only in the first match, against Greece, the quality of our game left much to be desired. The Greeks have a very strong team from a physical point of view, they demonstrate simple, powerful football, press a lot, and we got a little stuck in this fight. But then, as they say, our guys ran away. By the way, we did not conduct pre-match training, but did a full-fledged process to tell the players as much as possible about the requirements of the coaching staff. We want to achieve a result that would be supported by the game, this is much more important in the long term.

There are very talented kids in Ukraine, we can beat strong European teams, especially in terms of play. Our players are great. The pace of the game was much higher than in the championship, hence there were more mistakes, because you have to make decisions faster. But the guys tried very hard, and it turned into a victory in the tournament. It's good that we started with a positive result. This will give the players strength and motivation for the future.  

Photo of UAF press service

UEFA U-15 Development Tournament

17.12. Greece — Ukraine - 1: 3

17.12. Portugal — Ireland — 5:0

19.12. Ukraine — Ireland — 1:0

19.12. Portugal — Greece — 6:3

22.12. Portugal — Ukraine — 0:0, on penalties — 4:5 

22.12. Ireland — Greece — 3:1

Summary table

The composition of the Ukrainian youth national team U-15

Goalkeepers: Oleksandr Varivoda (Shakhtar Donetsk), Karim Bahriev (Dynamo Kyiv), Alexander Simoskov (Barcelona, ​​Spain).

Defenders: Oleksandr Chmelyov, Artur Malyuta, Oleksandr Ivasyshyn (all — Rukh Lviv), Dmytro Tsebenyak (Bayern Munich, Germany), Velizar Artyukhovich, Daniil Lapunov (both — Shakhtar Donetsk), Oleksandr Dzvonyk (Livyi Bereg Kyiv), Artur Babenko (Borussia Monchengladbach, Germany).

Midfielders: Shain Kochura (Rukh Lviv), Ivan Nagayets (Borussia Monchengladbach, Germany), Myroslav Vaskovskyi (Liverpool, England), Mykyta Bonyuk, Arseniy Semenchenko (both — Shakhtar Donetsk), Yevhen Kozachuk (Kryvbas Kryvyi Rih).

Attackers: Oleksandr Vologdin (Espanyol Barcelona, ​​Spain), Nikita Drozd (Nuremberg, Germany), Andriy Cholak (Rukh Lviv), Artem Zamorsky (Livyi Bereg Kyiv).