Ukraine Beats Portugal to Reach Euro 2020

Ukraine has advanced to the finals of Euro 2020 following an impressive first-half enabled them with a 2-1 home win against Portugal. This led Ukraine at the top of the table with 19 points of 7 games. It is 8 points more than Portugal, the second-placed European champions. Serbia is in the third position with 10 points from 6 games after Aleksandar Mitrovic gave them a win at Lithuania with 2-1 score.

Luxemburg has obtained 4 points of 6 games and Lithuanians lagging behind with only 1 point of 7 matches. Ukraine had to avoid being defeated to qualify for the third consecutive European championship. They had a perfect start with Roman Yaremchuk firing them to a 6th minute lead.

The striker had hammered the ball towards the empty net from a distance of 3 meters after Rui Patricio was able to parry the close-range header by Serhiy Kryvtsov. Portugal had replied to this with a series of raids but they were left stunned at the 27 minutes as Andriy Yarmolenko swept home inch-perfect Mykolenko cross from the left.

The visitors had missed out on many chances towards the end of the first half prior to Yarmolenko coming close again as he fired wide from a closer range with another swiffer break from Ukraine.

Before the handball of Taras Stepanenko which led him to be sent off with a yellow card. This gave Portugal a penalty shot in the 72nd minute. He blasted spot-kick at the top-corner but the home side had held out in closing stages and while Andriy Pyatov, the goalkeeper of Ukraine made many good saves, Danilo Pereira hit the crossbar before the stopping time.

Portugal seems to be skating on thin ice as Serbia has taken them back to content for top 2 finishes following the win at Lithuania.