The head coach of Ukraine's U-21 national team, Ruslan Rotan, shared his expectations for the playoff qualifier match against Slovakia on September 27 at the Municipal Stadium in Polish city Bielsko-Biała (kick-off at 3:30 PM Kyiv time). Considering the loss in the away game (2:3), a victory is now essential for the blue and yellow team.

"These two days were dedicated to recovery, both physically and psychologically. We used this time to recover, so I believe the boys are ready and understand what's required tomorrow. I think everything is in our hands and feet."

Regarding the squad situation, as it often happens after matches, there are some micro-injuries present. Vovcharenko will miss the game due to a suspension. This is our only loss.

Defensive play? Everyone understands that we made mistakes. But everyone loses together; the main thing is to draw conclusions and move forward. We've drawn conclusions, and I'm confident that tomorrow we won't make such mistakes.

In terms of psychology, everything seems to be in place so that the boys understand: extra emotions and worries should be set aside. There's a match that needs to be won. Everyone understands this perfectly well.

Among Slovakia's squad in the first game, players who showed more confidence stood out. These are footballers from the national team who have already played for the senior team and demonstrated quite good play. Strilec, Suslov — they showed us that these are executors who lead the entire group. And we need to separately highlight their character, which is their main weapon. This is a team that fights for results until the end. We saw this in the previous match, and we'll see it again tomorrow. We need to be prepared above all for this character and for this game where there are many long passes.

I would say that psychologically we understand: we only need a win, everything else needs to be set aside. Thanks to our skill, structure... All of us need to show character. This will probably be the toughest match for us at this stage, so we need to understand it.

The stadium? To be honest, this is our first visit; this was our first training session there. Maybe we would have liked to train more before this, but such a situation arose that we didn't have the opportunity. Nothing terrible, it's a good modern stadium. We have all the chances to show a good game and please above all our warriors and defenders, as well as the entire country. The pitch? I already mentioned that Slovakia forced us into an artificial turf trap in Jihlava. So we returned to green grass, and everything is in our feet.

It would be nice if Ukrainians who live here due to the war supported us. We will be happy to see them and do everything so that Ukraine qualifies for the European Championship," — quotes from Ruslan Rotan Community Sport.