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42 min: Ukraine have been slightly the better team so far ... and they might have proved that point with a goal just but Konoplyanka tonked a volley over the bar after meeting Gusyev's dainty cross. "Voronin looks a completely different player to the tubby Status Quo bass player that was so nonchalantly ineffective at Liverpool," riffs Eamonn Maloney. "Has the haircut had some kind of reverse-Samson effect?"
39 min: What a miss! Zlatan peeled off his marker and had time and space to pick a place to put Larsson's fine cross ... but he headed it against the outside of the post and wide!
38 min: Promising pressure from Ukraine! After a lovely move Shevchenko bore down on a goal but Mellberg blocked his shot. The striker then headed back acorss goal, where Yarmolenko's ferocious drive demanded another fine block.
37 min: Konoplyanka cuts in from the right and sends a reasonable long shot just wide.
36 min: Larsson's deliveries from set-pieces are usually delicious but so far they have been disappointing. He has just curled another corner into the keeper's arms.
35 min: That's more like it! Yarmolenko livens things up with a swirling shot from 25 yards. Isaksson was troubled but jsut about managed to bat it away.
32 min: Lustig swings a decent ball to the other flank, to Zlatan who is in plenty of space. But Zlatan appears to be on Galoot Mode at the moment and allows it bounce over him and out of play.
30 min: Zlatan's influence has been suppressed so far. A sign of his frustration is that when he received the ball 30 yards from goal just now, he shot despite being off-balance. There follows a sign of the folly of shooting when 30 yards from goal and off-balance.
27 min: Toivonen seems a rather run-of-the-mill forward. He just received the ball in a promising position and chugged straight into two defenders. No trickery, no speed, just hard work. His first name could be Dirk.
25 min: Nazarenko produces another astute pass, this time to find Voronin, who had made a canny run behind Granqvist. The keeper surges from goal to smother the danger just before the striker could connect with the pass.
22 min: Ohhhhh! Sweden were severed by a swift counter-attack. Nazarenko slips as ball through to Shevchenko, who from a tough angle elects to shoot rather than pass across the face of goal ... and his shoot whizzes a couple of yards wide.
19 min: The tempo of the game is increasing and the helter-skelter factor rising, which is making for a slightly more engaging spectacle. Still little action around the danger zones though. "Pigs don't oink in Sweden, they say Nuff Nuff," claims Gary Naylor, who may or may not be telling porkies.
15 min: A dangerous cross from Ibrahimovic on the left causes panic in the Ukranian box, which is only partially resolved by Pyatov's punched intervention. Nazarenko eventually completes the clearance. "Your wrote Rosenborg, his name is Rosenberg," quibbles Stefan Dahlgren. "Berg means mountain and borg means fort, so he is a mountain of roses, not a fort of the same flora. We Swedes take our flowerarranging seriously." Looks like now might be a good time to go tidy some tulips: this game isn't offering a better alternative so far.
13 min: Hmmn. I bet on there being more than two goals in this match but I'm not optimistic now. This is tight, and possibly even something that rhymes with that.
11 min: Either the ref is waving yellow because he's got caught up in the atmos, or he's just booked Kallstrom for a cynical late tackle on Gusyev.
10 min: Tymoshchuk, who has been man-marking Zlatan thus far, marks his man a little too literally and concedes a freekick wide on the left. Lasrsson curls it in ... to the keeper's arms.
7 min: Squeals od excitement from the home crowd as Ukraine enjoy a good spell of possession. A couple of last-ditch tackles prevent them from finding an opening.
5 min: After some patient interplay, Ukraine unleash the game's first shot, a low and inaccurate long-ranger from Konoplyanka. We'll be given a replay of that, but not before the camera has lingered on a pretty lady in the crowd. Do TV companies assign one camera-man solely to surveying crowds to spot same?
3 min: Centre-forward Rosenborg is scurrying around like a man with something prove - and no wonder, he hasn't scored an international goal for five years. He starts because Elmander is injured. Zlatan is playing just behind him, in the fabled hole.
1 min: We have go! Sweden set the game in motion and quickly launch it forward before following up in great numbers - their attacking intent is clear.
During the national anthem, some of the Ukranian players are swaying like drunks queuing at the bar. Nerves? Bizarre dancing pact?
To a tumultuous roar, the teams take to the pitch. Ukraine are resplendent in their traditional yellow, while the Swedes are in deep-sea blue with a sunny sash.
In respone to the poser posed at 7.26pm, Mike Wilner ventures: "If Andy Carroll had played today, I would have said that Sweden is in for England. Zlatan is tall and goofy - like Carroll. Zlatan wears a wimpy ponytail with a nancy band - like Carroll. Zlatan has a rackful of club trophies and has the ability to impose himself on a match - like, er..."
Shevchenko, who seeems like a thoroughly nice guy, is talking (in a pre-recorded interview, presumably) on the BBC about Kyiv, Ukraine and this tournament. Unfortunately, he has has spewed that old canard about the European Championships being harder to win the World Cup. Bilge! For a start, teams have to play one match more in the WC finals, and secodnly they have to overcome teams such as, oh, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and teams from those tiny continents of Asia and Africa.
"It's a public holiday here in Russia, but my girlfriend said I could take time off 'doing stuff together' to watch the England match," squawks Andrew Mullinder. "She just asked me, "how is your football going?", and I said that they now change the colour of their shirts and play another two halves, which, to my amazement, she seemed to accept. Will I get away with it?" So which of Sweden and Ukraine is "England"?
Teams:
Ukraine: 12-Andriy Pyatov; 9-Oleh Gusyev, 3-Evhen Khacheridi, 17-Taras Mykhalyk, 2-Evhen Selin; 4-Anatoly Tymoshchuk, 18-Serhiy Nazarenko, 11-Andriy Yarmolenko, 19-Evhen Konoplyanka; 7-Andriy Shevchenko, 10-Andriy Voronin
Sweden: 1-Andreas Isaksson; 2-Mikael Lustig, 3-Olof Mellberg, 4-Andreas Granqvist, 5-Martin Olsson; 6-Rasmus Elm, 9-Kim Kallstrom; 7-Sebastian Larsson, 10-Zlatan Ibrahimovic, 20-Ola Toivonen; 22-Markus Rosenberg
Referee: Cuneyt Cakir (Turkey)
Preamble:
Here it is then, the big one! Now that that England-France curtain-raiser is out of the way, it's time to see which of these sides be top of Group D tonight, assuming, rather hopefully, that we don't get a 0-0 draw. Sweden scored plenty in qualifying and in Zlatan Ibrahimovich have one of the most unpredictable strikers in the world – three parts genius, one part wastrel -, while Ukraine have a vibrant home crowd, a certain element of surprise and, um, the Amazing Andriys: Shevchenko and Voronin. Bring it on. And while we're waiting for it to be brought on, or even the line-ups to be unveiled, have a gander at Stuart James's preview:
It has been a while – 1,881 days, to be exact – since Michel Platini, the Uefa president, announced the co-hosts of Euro 2012 at the City Hall in Cardiff but the wait is nearly over for Ukraine. The former Soviet state has already played host to a couple of matches, in Kharkiv and Lviv, but 11 June, in the capital city of Kiev, was the date ringed on calendars in this country since the start of the year. Ukraine face Sweden at the revamped Olympic Stadium on Monday night and a proud nation expects.
Nothing has been straightforward about the lead up. Damning footage of racist abuse in Ukraine emerged on Panorama, Platini has described hotel owners as "bandits and crooks" for hiking prices to extortionate levels and a number of European leaders, as well as the British government, announced they would be boycotting the group stage matches in protest at the imprisonment of Yulia Tymoshenko, the Ukrainian opposition leader.
To compound matters, highly controversial comments about black players made by Oleh Blokhin, the Ukraine coach, in 2006, have resurfaced in recent weeks. "The more Ukrainians there are playing in the national league, the more examples there are for the younger generation," Blokhin said at the time. "Let them learn from Blokhin or [Andriy] Shevchenko, not some zumba-bumba who they took off a tree, gave two bananas and now he plays in the Ukrainian league."
انسخ الكود التالى و ضعه فى موقعك او مدونتك.
