Semi-defender of the Ukraine national team Ruslan Malinovskiy shared his expectations for the upcoming match against Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Euro 2024 playoff semifinal.

The blue-and-yellow team completed their preparatory stage in Marbella and set off to play an away game with the Bosnians. Midfielder of the Ukraine national team Ruslan Malinovskiy shared his thoughts ahead of the match.

"My self-feeling is finally great, as I caught a virus and it was tough. Now I feel very well. We are preparing for a decisive game. Everyone is in good spirits, we had training sessions, worked on some moments."

What are we working on? There are defensive and attacking phases, set pieces — these moments are being practiced. Mainly set pieces, because they are very important; after them many goals are scored. In recent games, we saw that opponents were conceding goals this way. So we need to focus on this.

Practicing penalties? I hope there won't be a penalty shootout at the end of the match. Everyone should be ready because it's one game and anything can happen. The guys have taken their penalties very seriously, everyone has done well.

Many players from the Bosnia and Herzegovina national team play in excellent European clubs. We need to give everything on the field, first of all be mentally ready because the match will be tough. We need to take control of the game from the very beginning, act very aggressively, quickly, as the Bosnian team is physically very strong. We need to be prepared for a fight, because winning it — that's 50 percent success.

Edin Džeko has an extremely high individual level. He can score from half a moment with his head in the penalty area. A very dangerous footballer, so we need to pay attention to this.

We have traveled to Bosnia to acclimatize and prepare for the game. But I think it's much better that it will be cooler there because playing under such conditions is more pleasant," — Ruslan Malinovskiy believes.

As a reminder, the Euro 2024 playoff semifinal match Bosnia and Herzegovina vs Ukraine will take place on March 21 in Zenica and will start at 8:45 PM local time (9:45 PM Kyiv time).