As is known, the Summer Olympics are held every four years, and the qualifying tournament for European teams is the European Youth Championship. However, only those that precede the Games themselves — i.e., one out of two, since youth championships in Europe take place more frequently — occur once every two years.

Therefore, the variants of Ukraine's youth team that could qualify for the Olympics participated in the Euro cycles of 1996, 2000, 2004, 2007 (when the final tournaments were moved to odd years), 2011, 2015, 2019, and 2023.

The closest generation to qualifying for the Olympics was that of players born in 1988-1989 (plus a few younger). Under Pavel Yakovenko's leadership, they overcame the qualification round and reached the final tournament. However, unfortunately, they finished last in their group. Despite this, the team composition was very interesting: future national team players Andriy Yarmolenko, Taras Stepanenko, Roman Zozulya, Yevhen Konoplyanka, Yaroslav Rakitskiy, Dmytro Boyko, Serhiy Kryvtsov, Bohdan Butko, Yevhen Selin, Mykola Morozuk, Denys Harmash, Artem Kravets, Roman Bezus...

Four years later, under the leadership of Sergiy Kovalets (the main generation being 1992-1993 plus younger talents), Ukraine's youth team stopped just short of reaching the final tournament, losing to Germany in the play-offs. Among its players were Oleksandr Karavaev, Pilyp Budkivskyi, Maxym Koval, Maxim Malyshev, Ruslan Malinovskiy, Vitaliy Buyalskiy, Serhiy Bolbat, Serhiy Mykytshko, who later debuted in the country's main team.

Overall, Ukraine had excellent chances to qualify for the Olympics with its first attempt — based on the results of the Euro-1996 (U-21) selection. However, in the final group stage match, they lost away to Italy (1:2), losing by one point in the overall standings — 20 against 21. As a result, the Italians became champions of Europe that year, with their gold-winning squad featuring future world stars such as Gianluigi Buffon, Francesco Totti, Christian Vieri, Fabio Cannavaro, Alessandro Nesta, and Christian Panucci, plus in the selection — also Alessandro Del Piero.

But our youth team was also very strong back then: future national team players Andriy Shevchenko, Serhiy Rebrov, Oleksandr Shovkovskiy, Vladyslav Vasyuk, Dmytro Mykhaylenko, Vitaliy Kosoyskiy, Valeriy Krivenkov, Vasyl Kardash, Illia Blyzniuk, Serhiy Fedorov, Yurii Dmitrulin, Hennadii Moroz...

Four more attempts by Ukrainians to qualify for the Olympics ended prematurely. In the selections of Euro-2000, Euro-2004, and Euro-2019, our team finished third, while in the transitional selection of Euro-2007 — second out of three in a shortened group stage and did not advance to the next round.

Attempts by Ukraine's youth national team to qualify for the Olympics