Ukraine – Sweden

Ukraine will not lose the semifinal, at least in regular time.

The Ukrainian national team has been consistently competing at the European Championships for the last fifteen years. They fare much worse in World Cup qualifiers, with the 'Yellow-Blue' team. The last time the Ukrainians, under Oleg Blokhin, qualified for the German World Cup in 2006, where they reached the quarterfinals outright and were eliminated by Italy — the eventual tournament champions. Since then, in the qualifying rounds, Ukraine has not finished higher than second place, and the play-offs have brought nothing but heartbreak to Ukrainian fans. In the current season, Serhiy Rebrov's team again has to prove its right to go to North America in the summer through play-offs. The match against Sweden will be held in Valencia, Spain. For security reasons, matches on Ukrainian soil have not been held since 2022, and the venue city and host country were chosen for a reason. In Spain there are more than 300,000 Ukrainians with temporary residency, and several hundred thousand more are natives of Ukraine who moved to the Pyrenees before the war. That is, the nominal home side will certainly not lack crowd support. Sweden performed so poorly in the World Cup qualifying that they changed their coach in the middle of the short autumn qualifying window last year. The national team was led by Graham Potter, who for several years has not been able to work well with Premier League teams. This coach is well known in Sweden, as from 2011 to 2018 he coached the local club Östersund. Bookmakers have indeed set the guests as favorites for the match, offering odds of 2.51 on their victory. The Ukrainian national team was drawn into a group with France, Iceland, and Azerbaijan. By beating the direct rival from the same-named island and losing twice to the French, the 'Yellow-Blue' finished second and moved on to the play-offs. On neutral grounds in nominally home fixtures, Ukraine lost only to France. The Swedes performed laughably in the group, collecting only two points, but reached the play-offs thanks to their success in the Nations League. Despite a good pool of players, Sweden does not have a cohesive team, and Potter, after his spell at Brighton, has endured only failures. Ukraine will not lose the semi-final, at least in regulation time.