On Thursday, July 27, Poltava “Vorskla” after “Dnipro-1” started in the European cup season. In the Polish city of Tychy, Viktor Skrypnyk’s wards played a home match of the second qualifying round of the Conference League against Georgian “Dila”, coached by Ukrainian specialist Andrii Demchenko.
Conference League. 2nd qualifying round. The first match
“Vorskla” (Poltava, Ukraine) — “Dila” (Gori, Georgia) — 2:1
“Vorskla”: Isenko, Krupsky, Santana (Hrypchuk, 83), Chesnakov, Perduta, Yurchenko (Sklyar, 73), Pavlyuk, Kane, Felipe Rodriguez, Chelyadin (Nesterenko, 73), Stepaniuk.
Naked: Felipe (73), Kane (90+3) — Kovtaluk (57).
In the offseason, “Vorskla”, which won a ticket to the European Cups only in the last round of the UPL, suffered significant personnel losses. Defender Kravets moved to “Dnipro-1”, midfielder Oliynyk – to LNZ, and the team’s best scorer Seferi will continue his career in the UAE club “Bani Yas”.
“Dila”, which already managed to knock Slovakian DAK out of the European Cups (1:2 and 2:0), started the match more actively with Ukrainian forward Kovtalyuk at the forefront of attacks and had several 100 percent chances to hit Isenko’s goal in the first half. It’s good that the Georgians didn’t score. The Poltava team had an excellent chance to take the lead, but Kane hit the bar after a solo pass.
The team from Gori used its chance at the beginning of the second half, when Kovtalyuk, a native of the Lviv region, after a pass from the wing, put the ball into the net of the “Vorskly” goal – 0:1.
And only after that, Skrypnyk’s wards “came to life”, played more aggressively, and in the 72nd minute, Brazilian Felipe directed the ball into the net of the Ukrainian goalkeeper “Dila” Kucherenko — 1:1. And already in the compensated time, Kane forced “Dila” to capitulate for the second time – 2:1.
The return match will take place on August 3 (start at 8:00 p.m.) at the Tengiz Burjanadze stadium in Gori. Let’s hope that “Vorskli” will finally manage to remove the “curse” of the opening rounds of the European Cups. After all, in four of the last five European Cup campaigns, the Poltava players invariably lost at the first stage and did not advance further, losing to the Croatian Lokomotiv, the Slovak Žilina, the Finnish club KuPS and the Swedish AIK.
We would like to remind you that in case of reaching the 3rd qualifying round of the tournament, Poltava players will play against the winner of APOEL (Cyprus) – Vojvodina (Serbia) on August 10 and 17. In the first meeting, the Cypriots defeated the opponent on their field – 2:1 (Kvilitaia, 32, Dvali, 65 – Zukic, 56).
Let’s add that the first match of the 2nd round of qualification was also played by potential rivals Kyiv “Dynamo”. “Ararat-Armenia” played a draw with the Greek “Aris” on their field – 1:1 (Eza, 11 – Palma, 20).
Earlier, FACTS reported where and when to watch live matches of the 1st round of the Ukrainian Football Championship.
Photo FC “Vorskla”
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