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European Football Championship 2021: The most important thing about the quarter

2021-07-03T21:06:47.193Z


The EM quarter-finals are starting - and you are not yet well informed? No problem: Ukraine has tremendous staying power, England has the best defense since Italy 1990. The teams in a quick check.


Enlarge image

England's Harry Maguire (center) celebrating the goal against Germany

Photo: FRANK AUGSTEIN / AFP

Would you like to

refresh your knowledge of the eight best teams

for the quarter-finals of the

European Football Championship

?

The most important

information about the

Ukraine-

England game on Saturday (9 p.m., TV:

ARD

, stream: MagentaTV, live ticker: SPIEGEL.de) can be found here.

What are the chances of the Ukrainians?

The Ukrainian ex-world-class striker and today's national coach Andrei Shevchenko had announced before the tournament.

That just succeeded as a third party in the group.

After a real football battle against Sweden and a win in extra time, Ukraine is now in an EM quarter-finals for the first time.

The success sparked a wave of euphoria at home, with even the government holding a cabinet meeting in national jerseys.

Against England, the Ukrainian team will fight until they drop - even if there is little on paper to suggest another coup.

Which player will be important?

In the group stage, Shevchenko almost exclusively adhered to a 4-3-3 basic order.

Against Sweden there was a system change to 3-5-2 - and a key player suddenly found himself in a new special role: Oleksandr Zinchenko, actually the central midfielder in the national team, moved to the left defensive side.

There Zinchenko also plays in the club - and the professional from Manchester City showed his best tournament performance: With his own goal and the template for the late winning goal, Zinchenko led his country into the next round.

The all-rounder is also the player in the tournament with the most successful tackles (15).

As one of the few individual talents at eye level, the England legionnaire will also be in focus on Saturday evening.

What else is there to know?

If the game follows historical models, staying power will be required: all three of the England’s quarter-finals have so far gone into extra time and penalties.

The Ukraine has already shown that they can concentrate over 120 minutes against the Swedes: Artem Dovbyk's winning goal after 120 minutes and 37 seconds is the second-latest in European Championship history, only Semih Sentürk's goal for Turkey in the game against Croatia in 2008 (121 Minutes and a second) was scored even later.

What are the chances of the English?

Before the game against Germany, it was sometimes assumed that the winner of this high-quality round of 16 on paper would have an easy path to the European Championship final.

After the 90 minutes at Wembley it seems a bit premature: England was the more mature and efficient of two cautious, largely harmless teams in the end.

But Ukraine will not tremble in front of an English team that, even with one more game in this tournament, still fired six fewer shots than the football dwarf North Macedonia.

Nevertheless - thanks to the impeccable defensive record as well as the quality of the individual players - Gareth Southgate's team are of course the clear favorites in the game.

Which player will be important?

Manchester United's Harry Maguire is one of the decisive factors for the success of the English defensive bulwark.

The angular central defender missed the first two European Championship games due to injury.

Against Germany, Maguire defended forward like a textbook, repeatedly put pressure on the attackers when receiving the ball and won most of the header duels.

If Maguire succeeds in taking away the fun of the game from the Ukrainian center forward Roman Yaremchuk early on, England could set a record for the Italians: in 1990, they were the only team to have conceded a goal in the first five group matches at a World or European Championship.

What else is there to know?

It doesn’t matter whether the tournament goes further for the Englishmen or not: the trip to the Roman Olympic Stadium will be the only game that the Three Lions are not allowed to play in front of their home crowd at Wembley Stadium. Both semi-finals and the final will take place in London. In this respect, this quarter-finals could well become a kind of predetermined breaking point for the co-favorites.

Source: spiegel

All sports articles on 2021-07-03

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