England will host Ukraine at Webley Stadium on tomorrow in their second match of the Euro 2024 Championship qualifiers, looking to continue with their perfect start.
The Three Lions come into this match after beating Italy 2-1 in Naples, and hope to keep this winning streak going with a victory over Ukraine, but the Blue and Yellow might have other plans as they seek to kick off their qualifiers with a win.
The last time the two teams met was in Euro 2020 quarterfinal and England came out with an easy 4-0 victory, but Ukraine have a good European Championship qualification record where they have only lost two in their last 19 matches.
Ukraine will have to play with all the energy they have to stop in-form English attackers consisting of Bukayo Saka, record-breaker Harry Kane, and Jude Bellingham among others.
The England camp has been faced with injuries with Marcus Rashford, Mason Mount and Nick Pope withdrawing early this week and Reece James pulling out of the squad today, but manager Gary Southgate insisted on not calling replacements as he feels he has enough backup players to do the job.
Since Oleksandr Petrakov stepped down from his role as Ukraine manager in January, the country’s FA has not appointed a permanent manager for the role so they come into this game with former player Ruslan Rotan as caretaker manager.
The road ahead might seem quite steep, as Ukraine have not beaten England away from home in four previous attempts (D1 L3) since September 2012.
Team news
Mason Mount, Marcus Rashford, Nick Pope, and Reece James are out injured for England. Luke Shaw was sent off during the match against Italy so he will sit this one out, with Ben Chilwell expected to play at left-back.
Ukraine will miss the services of centre-back Ilya Zabarnyi and midfielder Oleksandr Zubkov due to injury. Everyone else is available so it is up to Rotan to select who starts over who.
