How to Watch the Ukraine-Wales World Cup Playoff Game

In April, FIFA, soccer’s global governing body and the organizer of the World Cup, announced the Ukraine-Scotland match had been rescheduled for June 1, with the final — already set for Wales — to be held a few days later.

On Wednesday, Ukraine beat Scotland, 3-1, in a game charged with emotion at Hampden Park in Glasgow. It was the Ukrainians’ first official game since November.

Was Ukraine expected to be here?

Until the Scotland game, it was hard to know what to expect from Ukraine. Rescheduling its World Cup playoff was one thing. Preparing for the game was another matter.

Like most of Europe’s national teams, Ukraine has players who are scattered across the continent: Oleksandr Zinchenko just won a Premier League title with Manchester City, and Andriy Yarmolenko (West Ham), Ruslan Malinovskyi (Atalanta) and Roman Yaremchuk (Benfica) all play for big European clubs. That meant the core of the team was getting regular training and games, even if their minds were constantly distracted by the war back home.

But the Ukrainian league shut down as soon as Russia invaded, leaving the bulk of Ukraine’s players with no place to play. The top clubs Shakhtar Donetsk and Dynamo Kyiv managed to get their players out of the country and set up camps abroad and a series of exhibition matches so their players could train.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/05/sports/soccer/ukraine-wales-world-cup.html