The women's national beach soccer team of Ukraine won silver at the III European Games in Tarnów, Poland. In the group stage, our team secured second place in Group B, defeating Italy (2:1) and losing to Spain (4:6). In the semifinal match, blue-and-yellow overcame Portugal (3:1), while in the final they conceded to Spain — the world's top-ranked team according to BSWW (2:2, 3:5 — on penalties).

The performance of Ukraine’s women's national team and the organization of the tournament were commented by our team coach Yuriy Klimenko.

"We have only positive impressions from the organization of the games in Poland. The only issue was logistics — it took three hours each day to travel from Kraków to Tarnów. But all teams traveled this way, so we had no complaints.

In the Olympic village everything was simply great — living conditions and meals. All national teams lived nearby in a friendly atmosphere, exchanging souvenirs like Olympic badges. We played on a wonderful stadium, except that rain at times and (occasionally) poor refereeing left some negative impressions. It was very hard to play against worthy opponents and also against the referees. But let this remain their conscience.

As for our performance — the girls worked 100%. A huge thank you to them for what they did for Ukraine! In every match, preparation and dedication were at maximum levels, training instructions were fully followed. The only exception was the opening match against Spain. There were several defensive mistakes in that game, while goal-scoring opportunities were not converted well. We analyzed our actions in that duel and performed decently in subsequent games.

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The biggest disappointment was in the final when Spain equalized 40 seconds before the end of regular time. That goal... Everyone saw that it was a handball. We appealed to the referee, he stated that he noticed the infringement but could not do anything about it. The VAR system is unfortunately not available for our tournaments and this was the decision of the referees on the line.

Of course, it's very sad to concede a goal 40 seconds before regular time ends and 40 seconds before extra time ends. The first goal — there the goalkeeper could have played better coming out, while the second one — this is already masterful execution by the goalkeeper and captain of Spain’s national team who headed the ball into the net.

The girls generally took such an event course well, though a bit deflated after extra time. Nevertheless, the coaching staff prepared them for the fact that the match was not lost, they had to prepare for penalty kicks. Unfortunately, in this series Fortune was not on our side...

The final was very tense — with consideration of the battle between us and Spain for overall medal standings at III European Games. But the girls coped with this psychological burden and fought honorably against a worthy opponent. In the third period, the game advantage was already ours. A bit unlucky, but it was a final that we can truly be proud of. No matter — the main thing is there's potential, and with each such tournament we become stronger," — said Yuriy Klimenko.

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In addition, the head coach of Ukraine's national team spoke about our team’s future plans: "Now we will have two weeks off. Then we’ll gather — I hope in full strength — for a training camp in Kyiv around July 20th. After that there will be ten days of preparation, and on the 30th we depart to Bali for the II World Beach Games."

Recall that the II World Beach Games, which Ukraine’s women's national beach soccer team will participate in, are scheduled from August 5-12 on the Indonesian island of Bali.