Ukraine coach Oleg Blokhin said his team's opening match against Sweden on June 11 will decide whether his team has any chance of reaching the European Championship quarterfinals.
"If Sweden or Ukraine loses the opening match, they will have no chance of advancing from this group," Blokhin said through a translator on Thursday, June 7.
Reaching the quarterfinals would match Ukraine’s performance at the 2006 World Cup in Blokhin’s first stint as national coach.
"It will be hard," Blokhin said. "The tournament is very short. We expect a tough match. It’s a bit like the toss of a coin."
England and France are also in Group D, making it a difficult task for Ukraine to progress under Blokhin, a former star striker who scored 42 goals in 112 matches for the Soviet Union.
Blokhin said his team won’t be affected by back-to-back losses in its last two warm-up games, against Austria and Turkey, nor by the food poisoning that affected 10 players earlier this week.
He declined to comment on the illness that struck his players after they ate salad at a hotel in Germany prior to playing Turkey on June 5, stating that "the topic has finished."
All the players recovered within two days and took part in the June 7 public training session at Dynamo Kiev’s stadium.
Blokhin said he wasn’t bothered by the 2-0 loss to Turkey or the 3-2 reverse to Austria.
"You cannot evaluate your performance by friendly games," Blokhin said. "The positive side from the Turkey match was that many players got a chance to present themselves in the team."
Blokhin went through an extensive video analysis of the Turkey match but wouldn’t reveal his conclusions.
"That remains inside the team," he said. "We analyzed the game for an hour. Normally we do only half an hour, so it was a serious discussion. But the outcome stays inside the team."
Blokhin used all 23 players from the squad across the three warm-up games — Ukraine beat Estonia 4-0 in its first friendly on May 28. Only midfielder Yevhen Konoplyanka and striker Marko Devic were in the starting lineup in all three matches, indicating Ukraine is still searching for the right balance.
For Blokhin, that’s a reason to dampen expectations. He called on the Ukrainian media "not to raise expectations too high."
"If you raise too much excitement, every minor mistake would be seen as a major fallback," the coach said. "Even the favorites are cautious in their predictions and say they might not win. Nobody put any pressure on Denmark or Greece, but they won."
Despite his team’s recent lack of form and the pressure on his team as the host nation, Blokhin seems calm.
"My career as a coach taught me not to show what’s inside me," he said. "I was an unpredictable player and now I am an unpredictable coach. I feel the normal excitement for the start of such an event.
"I am ready for the battle and look forward to the fight."
