DUESSELDORF, Germany (Reuters) – Substitute Roman Yaremchuk kept Ukraine in Euro 2024 contention with a goal 10 minutes from time to beat a shell-shocked Slovakia 2-1 on Friday and keep alive their hopes of reaching the next round.
Yaremchuk latched on to a flighted pass from Mykola Shaparenko and prodded the ball past keeper Martin Dubravka to deny Slovakia, who had opened the scoring, an early place in the knockout phase.
Ukraine made five changes from their miserable 3-0 drubbing by Romania, with winger Andriy Yarmolenko and goalkeeper Antoliy Trubin brought into the side and playing a vital role in the victory.
Slovakia started strong with Lukas Haraslin, Ivan Schranz and David Hancko forcing good early saves from Trubin early on before Schranz broke the deadlock in the 17th minute, earning his second goal of the tournament with a superb downward header from Haraslin’s sweet lobbed cross.
Ukraine battled hard to get back into the game, with Oleksandr Tymchyk hitting the post just after the half hour mark.
They got their reward after 54 minutes when Shaparenko found himself in space and fired cooly into the net after a Oleksandr Zinchenko cross and kept up the pressure throughout the second half until they snatched the winner late on.
(Reporting by Martin Petty)
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