Both teams seem to be in the rebuilding stage, so at this point there's not much to choose between them. In the past, though, I always thought Ukraine was the better side. They performed well in the 2006 World Cup, but I was disappointed not to see them in 2010. And is Shevchenko really a lock for selection to Euro 2012?
With all due respect to Ukrainian fans, I've seen U-12 match with better atmosphere haters say that they are too serious for an under-12 game but it's all for fun, just look at 7:40, seems like Tottenham kids had a great time in Poznań [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26Ju8-AzH6I"]YouTube - Lech Cup 2010: Lech Pozna? - Tottenham Hotspur[/ame] but if I want to be fully objective I have to agree with this statement. Ukrainian league is way better than Polish as we talk about pure quality of playing football
For EURO 2012, which host nation will do better in the competition, I say Ukraine will, Ukraine will make it all the way to semi-final at least, Poland they will get out of their group and make it to the quarter-finals, then get eliminated
Based on the recent form I think Poland will be eliminated in group stages and Ukraine could reach the quarter final as group runners-up. It's hard to guess as we don't even know the groups yet.
I admit, man here has a point, but Ukraine have to also be considered favorites to go far in the tournament for EURO 2012 considering that it will be played in their backyard, home crowd behind them, and also they have good players too to boot, Poland I don't see them doing anything in EURO 2012, if they do, and Poland actually goes far, I will be surprised shocked if they do
Very Good Question. I think Poland is a little bit better, but not by much. I wasn't sure, however, so I wanted to perform a detailed analysis of each key player and formation. They scored almost even with Poland being slightly stronger on paper. This is probably becasue Poland have much more players playing in a top European Tier (mostly Bundesliga). On the other hand, Ukraine's best players (Sheva, Tymoszczuk) are in their mid 30's and achieved their peak in 2006. Here is how I rated both Euro 2012 co-hosts. RECENT HISTORY: (2000-2010) POLAND- (WC 2002-Group Stage) (WC 2006-Group Stage) (EC 2008-Group Stage) 2 World Cup Qualifications (Didn't do anything) 1 Euro Cup Qualification (Didn't do anything) UKRAINE- (WC 2006-Best 8) 1 World Cup Qualification (Had a good World Cup, however, didn't upset any top teams) VERDICT- Difficult to say which national team had a better decade. Again, as a team, probably Poland, because they qualifed (3) times for a finals tournament, as opposed to Ukraine's (1) finals tournament appearence. However, without a doubt Ukraine did produce much better individual players (Ex. Shevchenko) CURRENT (July 2011) FORMATION RATING: (Out of 5 Stars) POLAND versus UKRAINE (G) 4.5 Stars --- 3 Stars Szczesny (Arsenal London) vs Pyatov (Shakhtar Donieck) Boruc (Fiorentina) vs Shovkovskiy (Dynamo Kiev) Verdict for Goalkeepers: Poland has superior goalkeeping with Arsenal's #1 Szczensny, as well as, Boruc of Fiorentina. Ukraine doesn't have a goalkeeper in a Top European Team or even Leauge. That's important. (D) 2 Stars --- 3 Stars Piszczek (Borussia Dortmund) vs Chygrinskiy (Shakhtar Donieck) Boenisch (Werder Bremen) vs Kucher (Shakhtar Donieck) Wojtkowiak (Lech Poznan)vs Rusol (Dnipro) Dudka (AJ Auxeree) vs Rakitskiy (Shakhtar Donieck) Verdict for Defense: Ukraine is more solid at the back. In Chygrinskiy, they have a high quality defender. Poland has interesting players in Piszczek and Boenisch, but the rest of the defense is weak. (M) 3.5 Stars --- 3 Stars Kuba (Borussia Dortmund) vs Tymoshchuk (Bayern Munich) Obraniak (Lille) vs Aliyev (Dinamo Kiev) Polanski (Mainz) vs Rotan (Dnipro) Matuszczyk (FC Koln) vs Nazerenko (Dnipro) Peszko (FC Koln) vs Husyev (Dinamo Kiev) Mierzejewski (Trabzanspor) vs Gai (Shakhtar Donieck) -Verdict for Midfield- Poland's midfield with (4 Bundesliga Players and 1 French Leauge) seems stronger than Ukraine's which only has 1 player in a Top Euro Tier (Tymoshchuk-Bundesliga). Ukraine's Aliyev, however, could easily play at this level as well. A slight advantage to Poland here. (F) 3 Stars --- 3.5 Stars R.Lewandowski (Borussia Dortmund) vs Shevchenko (Dynamo Kiev) Jelen (AJ Auxeree) vs Milevskiy (Dynamo Kiev) Sobiech (Hannover 96) vs Voronin (Dynamo Moscov) Brozek (Trabzanspor) vs Seleznyov (Dnipro) - Verdict for Forward- Ukraine's Shevchenko will be 35 years old during Euro 2012. Also, Voronin will be on the wrong side of 30. They are well past their prime and no longer playing in Top Euro Leauges. However, they, combined with a talented Milevskiy still bring a level of quality. In R.Lewandowski Poland have a very talented striker, a Bundesliga Champion with Borussia Dortmund. In Jelen, they have a proven goal getter from the French Leauge.However, the quality and leadership of Shevchenko alone (despite his age) is still enough to pull Ukraine slightly ahead in attack. TOTAL RATING SCORE: POLAND: 13 Points UKRAINE: 12.5 Points There you have it. They are as even as they get. I wish them both lots of success at Euro 2012. They both have the potential to reach the the Q-F or even semi-finals and with luck and good form, they could do it. My predicton, however: Both Poland and Ukraine will reach the quarter finals. They are superior to Euro 2008 Co-hosts Austria and Switzerland.
You made two mistakes: 1. Just because Shovkovskiy doesn't play on a top league team does not mean he's weaker than any of the Polish keepers. 2. And vice-verse, just because Chyhrynskyi spent one laghingstock season at Barcelona does not mean he is particularly good. In fact, I believe, Ukraine's best defender, Taras Mykhalyk, is not even on the list. In fact, DEFENSE is Ukraine's weakest point.
Dont remind me, having 24 teams in a Euro(almost half the Goddamn continent) severly reduces the intense desperate atmosphere and quality of play. Probably the most retarded decision Uefa ever made, a lot of average teams that qualify will play Greece like Euro 2004 soccer just to fight for draws as the third place team in 4 of 6 groups will qualify for the round of 16.
Disagree about goalkeeping. Having a goalkeeping playing for Arsenal or Fiorentina is a much bigger advantage for the national team, then having them play in the Ukrainian Leauge. Ukranian Leauge isn't all that bad, but its light years away from the English Premiership or Seria A level. Also training with guys like Fabregas, Van Persie, day in day out, gives something by itself. If not increased skills, then at least increased confidence and that is key for goalkeepers. Poland has much better goalkeepers. That is one position that they are very good at. I agree about Ukraine's defense and that they might be a player missing. Perhaps, Chygro is over-rated, but I think as bad as Ukraine's defense is rightnow, Poland's is even worse. Its just plain horrible (apart from fullbacks which are really part of the offense).
I disagree on Goalkeeping. It's Ukraine's best position right now. Shovkovskyi has had many invitations (including Arsenal, by the way) from the Premiership over the years but he is a Dynamo player, through and through. At certain times, Shovkovskyi had been one of the best keepers in the world. He has been a UNT goalkeeper since 1994 and only gets better. I do not know a better goalkeeper to save penalties than he does. He has saved more than 30 official penalty kicks already, including blanking Switzerland on a penalty choot-out at the Second Round of 2006 WC. Our defense is terrible. We don't even have a good enough RB or a LB. A country of 46 million people can not produce a single RB or LB! It is funny, but in your comparison you used 4 Ukrainian CBs. Rakytskyi can play a little LB, but he is a centre back. And with Mykhalyk injured, we can't even find a second good CB. Chyhrynskyi is injured too and not very good. I think Ukraine's best CB pairing are Mykhalyk - Rusol. Rusol now rarely plays for NT and Mykhalyk is injured. Today Ukraine can field 0 (ZERO) quality defenders. A very important note for the rest of the Ukrainian National Team - you may have noticed that only one UNT player (Tymoschuk) is playing in the Top 6 leagues. The reason for it, unlike the Polish league, Ukrainian league is actually 8th in UEFA currently. These players find a decent enough league to play in AT HOME.
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I think you are over-estimating the Ukrainian Leauge and players which play in it. Sure, two teams like Shachtar or Dynamo are stronger teams then lets Lech Poznan or Wisla Krakow (Poland's 2 best teams). Not to mention that Shachtar (the best team by far) is filled with foreign players and lets be honest, without the Brazilian, Croat, Czech players they would be a very, very average team, not even qualifying for Champions Leauge. However, the rest of the league, well, its at the same level as Polish. Its those top few teams (pumped by oligarch money) that have given the Ukrainian Leauge a really good image. The rest of the teams are very average, just like Polish. As for the Ukrainian goalkeeping and Polish, I think you are over-estimating Shovkovskyi by a mile. I will say again, you can't compare him to goalkeepers (Polish) who play against Seria A or Premiership strikers each week. There is just no comparison to that. Poland's goalkeeping is far superiour. I am not sure, why Poland makes better goalkeepers, becasue football wise, Poland and Ukraine are very similar, but that's how it is. Also, you said only Tymoschuk now plays in a good European League (Bundesliga) and you said that its not important, becasue other Ukrainian players can just stay at home since the Ukrainian league is so strong. Well, its not strong. Two teams are at a decent European Level, but the rest are very low level...... So what are we talking about???? Ukrainian League with Seria A or Bundesliga or Premiership. No way. That's not logical. Players just cannot develp well enough in the Ukrainian Leauge. How good would have been Sheva if he didnt complete his development at AC Milan??? He was the best striker in the world in the mid 2000's, but he needed to play against strong defenses and very high quality players. What I want to say, is that both Poland and Ukraine doesn't develop players well. They both have lots of talent, but for the player to get really high quality, he needed to leave young and play for years in a Top Euro Leauge. I think, Poland has more players like that (now) that fit this category, especially goalkeepers. Ukraine of 2006, had players like Sheva or Voronin (for example) in the Top Leauges. This helped them alot.
History (POLAND vs UKRAINE) 1998- UKRAINE 1- 2 POLAND 2000- UKRAINE 1- 3 POLAND 2001- POLAND 1- 1 UKRAINE 2008- UKRAINE 1-0 POLAND 2010- POLAND 1-1 UKRAINE They are very similar, although I would argue that Poland is a little bit better. Also in the last game (1-1) 2010 (as to show the current ability) both teams tied, but Poland was the much better team (clearly outshooting and outplaying Ukraine) at least on the day. Poland gave up the goal in the 90 minute, but should have won the game 2 or 3 to zero. Either way, I am sure Poland would like to have Ukraine in the WC 2014 group. Ukraine might feel the same. Both teams are capable of winning on a good day, making for an interesting rivary. I would love to see them (somehow) face off at EURO 2012. That would be very good for the tournament.
Ukraine in 2006 had only two players in top leagues. Voronin and Sheva. It was a decent team without much Top League talent. Obviously, it does not matter whether the players play in top leagues or not. Ukrainian National Team, unlike Poland or other EE national teams were almost always dominated by domestic league players. That is how it always was. As I have mentioned, many Dynamo Kyiv players have been offered Premiership contracts through the years, but why would anyone leave Dynamo and go play for Sunderland, Wolverhampton, Fulham, the teams that may never play in CL? But there is no use having this discussion as Ukrainian National Team does not yet really exist. The only certain thing about it is goalkeeping. That is the only unit that is any good right now. Goalkeeping is Ukraine's only good unit.
goliath74 said "Ukraine in 2006 had only two players in top leagues. Voronin and Sheva. It was a decent team without much Top League talent. Obviously, it does not matter whether the players play in top leagues or not" Here you are wrong. Ofcourse, it mattered that players play abroad, becasue Ukraine 2006 without Sheva (Ac Milan and a world star) plus Voronin (Bundesliga Star or something close to that) would have never made the 2006 WC in the first place. What would they have been without those two players, especially Sheva. I think you know the answer to that. They would not be at the WC. So, having good players (even 2 or 3) in Euro Top Leagues does matter. Even alot.
Voronin had historically underperformed as an International. He was frequently thrown out of the NT. He was (and, probably, is) almost useless in the national team. Without Voronin, Ukrainian National Team would be no different. Another matter is Shevchenko, of course. He was then as he is now, Ukrainian biggest star. So, in reality, UNT only had one effective Top League player in 2006.
We will see after the Euros who is better. Both teams are in Group H for the Brazil 2014 WC. Unless, of course, the improbable happens and they meet in the Euro final.....
We will see very well in WC 2014 Qualification. I am picking Poland to top Ukraine (again) but it could go either way.
Depends on what we pick as a criteria. If we compare players - I have to pick Poland in every position except goalkeeping. I do not even know what UNT is going to look like in a month, since they got a new coach in May, Oleg Blokhin (the same guy who led Ukraine to WC 2006). If we try to use recent results, the story is different - Ukraine have had better results than Poland lately. IN WC2010 Qualifying, Ukraine went second in the group with England and Croatia but lost the play-off to Greece - 6W-3D-1L, 21 points Poland finished 5th in their group (behind Slovakia, Slovenia, Czech Republic, and Northern Ireland) - 3W-2D-5L, 11 points The picture, of course, is different if you go past the last 3 years, as Poland did qualify to Euro2008 and Ukraine got buried in the qualifying group with both WC2006 finalists, Italy and France (and even let Scotland ahead of them).
Poland has two bronze medals from World Cups: 1974, 1982. Wojciech Szczęsny has potential. Other good players are: Dariusz Dudka, Ludovic Obraniak, Jakub Błaszczykowski, Robert Lewandowski, Artur Boruc, Łukasz Fabiański, Ireneusz Jeleń, Euzebiusz Smolarek. Ukraine: from 1930-1990 - members of Soviet Union. World Cup 2006: quarterfinals. Good players are: Yaroslav Rakitskiy, Anatoliy Tymoshchuk, Oleh Husyev, Ruslan Rotan, Andriy Shevchenko, Artem Milevskiy, Oleksandr Shovkovskiy, Andriy Pyatov, Andriy Rusol, Vyacheslav Shevchuk. We need to know how did Ukraine participated in Soviet Union? Ukraine is better than Poland in modern times.
From what (little) I've read, it seems like a large amount of USSR players were from what is now Ukraine, so they had a huge influence on the Soviet national teams. For example, the most capped USSR players (I took top 11 since there are 11 players, though this isn't necessarily a "starting lineup"): 1. Oleg Blokhin (Ukraine) 2. Rinat Dasaev (Russia) 3. Albert Shesternev (Russia) 4. Anatoliy Demyanenko (Ukraine) 5. Volodymyr Bezsonov (Ukraine) 6. Siarhey Aleinikaw (Belarus) 7. Lev Yashin (Russia) 8. Murtaz Khurtsilava (Georgia) 9. Oleg Protasov (Ukraine) 10. Valeriy Voronin (Russia) 11. Oleh Kuznetsov (Ukraine) 5/11 from Ukraine 4/11 from Russia 1/11 from Belarus 1/11 from Georgia
Same thing is with Yugoslavia. Serbia got all results from Yugoslavia, even though in these Yugoslavian teams played Croatians, Bosnians in mayority. On World Cup 1962. Croatian Drazan Jerkovic was best goalscorer, but Yugoslavian fourth place from that World Cup in Chile got Serbia. Analyze: Yugoslavia national football team Best results: World Cups: 1930: Semifinale (4) position - 17 players: 16 (Serbians), 1 (German-Hungarian). 1962: Semifinale (4) position - 22 players: 8 (Croatians), 12 Serbians, 1 (Bosnian Muslim), 1 (Gorani Muslim). 1990: Quartefinale (5) position - 22 players: 8 (Croatians - Tomislav Ivković, Zoran Vulić, Davor Jozić, Alen Bokšić, Robert Prosinečki, Robert Jarni, Davor Šuker, Andrej Panadić) 5 (Serbians), 5 (Bosnian Muslims - Faruk Hadžibegić, Safet Sušić, Fahrudin Omerović, Refik Šabanadžović, Mirsad Baljić), 1 (Motenegrin - Dejan Savicevic), 1 (Macedonian - Darko Pancev), 1 (Slovenian - Srecko Katanec), 1 (Bosnian Serbian, who is today Croatian - Zlatko Vujovic) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1990_FIFA_World_Cup_squads#Yugoslavia After 1990. Yugoslavia didn't existed. Euros: 1960: Finale - three Croatian players scored 3 goals against France in Semifinals: Zanetic, Knez and Jerkovic. Match finished 5-4 for Yugoslavia. 1968: Finale - but with mayority of Serbians. 22 players - 3 (Croatians), 2 (Bosnian Muslims), 1 (Bosnian unknown ethnicity player Ivica Osim maybe Croatian), 15 (Serbians) 1976: Fourth place - 18 players - 7 (Croatians), 6 (Serbians), 4 (Bosnian Muslims), 1 (Slovenian). And Serbia got this results as their owo. Fifa and her justice. One of these 6 Serbians was born in Croatian city Split, but he is ethnical Serb (Slavisa Zungul). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFA_Euro_1976_squads Also there were some quartefinals, first rounds. Euros: 1984: First Round. Worlds Cups: 1950: First Round. 1982: First Round. 1954: Quarterfinale 1958: Quarterfinale 1974: Quarterfinale 1990: Quarterfinale In these competitions you can also expect mixed ethnicity. But Serbia got all results on unfair background. Same model had Soviet Union, also Russia got all results like Serbia. Most caped Yugoslavian players: Most capped players, when you include all competitions: Name Career Caps Goals 1 Dragan Džajić 1964 – 1979 85 23 2 Zlatko Vujović 1979 – 1990 70 25 3 Branko Zebec 1951 – 1961 65 17 4 Stjepan Bobek 1946 – 1956 63 38 5 Faruk Hadžibegić 1982 – 1992 61 6 6 Branko Stanković 1946 – 1956 61 3 7 Ivica Horvat 1946 – 1956 60 0 8 Vladimir Beara 1950 – 1959 59 0 9 Rajko Mitić 1946 – 1957 59 32 10 Bernard Vukas 1948 – 1957 59 22 11 Vujadin Boškov 1951 – 1958 57 0 12 Blagoje Marjanović 1926 – 1938 57 36 13 Jovan Aćimović 1968 – 1976 55 3 14 Zlatko Čajkovski 1946 – 1955 55 7 15 Fahrudin Jusufi 1959 – 1967 55 0 16 Mehmed Baždarević 1982 – 1992 54 4 17 Ivica Šurjak 1973 – 1982 54 10 18 Safet Sušić 1977 – 1990 54 21 19 Milorad Arsenijević 1927 – 1936 52 0 20 Dragan Holcer 1965 – 1974 52 0 Croatians Serbians Vladimir Beara is born in Croatia, ethnical Serb, but he declares himself as Croatian, but I putted him as Serbian Bosnian Muslims Zlatko Vujovic is probably Bosnian Serb or Montenegrin, but he played in Croatian club Hajduk, he declares himself as Bosnian Croat. It's not my fault that everyone wants to be Croatian. Conclusion: You have here 7 pure Croatians and 2 that wants to be Croatians, because they feel like that: Zlatko Vujovic and Vladimir Beara, so there are 9 Croatians with most caps for Yugoslavia. You have here 7 pure Serbians. You have here 4 Bosnian Muslims.
