Manchester City left-back Oleksandr Zinchenko has admitted that he and his Ukraine teammates have been dreaming about reaching the World Cup after moving to within one win of the finals in Qatar.
They beat Scotland 3-1 in their play-off semi-final at Hampden Park on Wednesday night, setting up a winner-takes-all clash with Wales in Cardiff on Sunday. Ukraine — who saw their clash with Scotland originally postponed because of Russia's invasion of the country earlier this year — produced a heroic performance, with City ace Zinchenko at the heart of it.
Andriy Yarmolenko and Roman Yaremchuk found the back of the net either side of half-time to fire Ukraine into a commanding 2-0 lead. However, the Scots pulled one back through Callum McGregor with around 10 minutes left on the clock.
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But despite Scotland throwing everything at Ukraine in a bid to keep their own World Cup dream alive, they were caught on the counter-attack and conceded a third goal with the very last kick of the game, after Artem Dovbyk slotted the ball past Craig Gordon from close range. He latched onto Zinchenko's pass and made no mistake.
It means that Ukraine are now just one victory away from joining England, Iran and the USA in Group B in Qatar. And for City ace Zinchenko, who was magnificent against Steve Clarke's side, it was a victory that meant so much following the conflict the country has recently been put through.
"To be fair, everyone, of course, knows the situation right now in Ukraine and every single game for us is like a final game," Zinchenko told Sky Sports. "But to be fair, we have dreamed like a team to be at the World Cup and we now have one more game, and we need to win it, otherwise this game is not going to mean anything."
On the victory and the upcoming clash with Wales, the versatile 25-year-old added: "I would say we played quite well, apart from maybe 20 minutes in the second-half. Scotland always leads a great team and they have unbelievable players in each line, so we knew it was going to be so tough.
"A team like Scotland play an open game, so it is not quite like our style, but we did well; we scored three goals and could have scored even more.
"It is going to be a massive game for us — everyone understands the situation for us. I would say that it is like a final and every single one of us needs to show our best performance in our lives and then we will see what is going to happen."
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