You're reading: Dnipro upsets Napoli 1-0 for first ever Europa League final berth

Yevhen Seleznyov’s sole goal in the semi-final fixture against Italy’s Napoli was enough to send Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk to its first ever Europa League final and gave Ukraine a well-deserved respite from Russia’s invasion of the eastern regions of the country.

Dnipro’s huge 1-0 upset and 2-1 aggregate
score means it will face three-time Europa League champion Sevilla of Spain on
May 27 in Warsaw. Sevilla beat Italy’s Fiorentina 2-0 today and 5-0 on aggregate.

Amid steady rain at Kyiv’s Olympic Stadium, the 29-year-old forward
headed winger Yevhen Konoplyanka’s teasing cross 13 minutes into the second
half as his shoulders were collapsing under the weight of two Napoli defenders.

Napoli failed to capitalize on 59 percent ball possession,
having 74 dangerous attacks versus Dnipro’s 43, and seven more attempts on
goal, according to data provided by UEFA, Europe’s top soccer governing body,
which administers the European club tournament.

Seleznyov also scored Dnipro’s only goal against Napoli a
week earlier in their first-legged fixture that ended 1-1 in Italy. Before the club’s
first leg match, Dnipro coach Myron Markevych rated his team’s chances of reaching
the final as 40 percent, according to an interview he gave to UEFA.

The twice runner-up in Ukraine’s domestic league – last year
and in the 1992-1993 season – had just scored 12 goals since the start of the
group stage, an average of less than a goal.

Dnipro has had to play its home European club tournament
fixtures in Kyiv because UEFA has determined that its base of Dnipropetrovsk is
too close to the war front where combined Russian-separatist forces continue to
wage an undeclared war since April 2014. More than 6,100 people have been killed and 1.6 million expelled from their homes since the bloody conflict started, according to the United Nations.

Shakhtar Donetsk was the last Ukrainian soccer club to reach
the Europa League final – formerly called the UEFA Cup – in 2009. It beat
Germany’s Werder Bremen 2-1 that year.