Wales vs Ukraine: Who Will Take Europe’s Final World Cup Group Stage Place?

As the players take to the pitch at the Cardiff City Stadium at 5 PM on Sunday, Wales knows that it will have the entire country behind it. Ukraine knows that it will have the rest of the world behind its team. Ukraine’s journey to being one game from the World Cup is remarkable itself, so will anyone be able to stand in their way of a place in Qatar in November?

Ukraine were unable to play their play-off games in the allocated March time slot, the team had to sit back and watch as the rest of Europe found out their fate for the biggest tournament in the world.

Some of the Ukraine national team players were able to continue playing for their domestic team. Captain of Ukraine, Oleksandr Zinchenko, became a champion of England once again, as Manchester City won their fourth league title in five years. His performance in the second half as City came from 2-0 down to beat Villa 3-2 perfectly defined the attitude of the nation.

Half of the team continued to play across Europe, including star striker Andriy Yarmolenko, Roman Yaremchuk and Vitaliy Mykolenko. Some others haven’t been as lucky.

The players who ply their trade for the big two in Ukraine, Shakhtar Donetsk and Dynamo Kyiv, had been stuck in Slovenia for the past month trying to get some all-important training for Ukraine, a team who had only qualified for the World Cup once in 2006.

Friendlies had been played against the likes of Borussia Monchengladbach but no national team had been able to provide stiff competition for a team where rustiness was high.

As Ukraine then stepped onto the field on Hampden Park on Wednesday night, with over 50,000 expectant Scottish fans expecting a Battle of Britain to follow to decide who would join the other 31 nations in the Middle East, the winner should have been obvious. As the referee blew the final whistle, Scotland and the rest of the world was stunned.

Ukraine dominated the game from start to finish. The first half saw a team who hadn’t played together for eight months have more cohesion and confidence than a team that hadn’t lost in 12 home qualifying games.

The 33rd-minute was when Ukraine finally asserted their dominance on the scoreboard, when Yarmolenko, the player who had just been released by West Ham, chipped Craig Gordon to send the Blue and Yellow 1-0 ahead at half time.

Steve Clarke’s side should have responded at half time, but Ukraine continued to carve Scotland apart and in the 49th minute, Benfica’s Yaremchuk nodded a header past Craig Gordon to give the Eastern Europeans complete control.

Scotland did try to mount a comeback, with John McGinn missing a sitter before Celtic’s Callum McGregor did put Scotland within one. That’s all that the Tartan Army could muster, with Artem Dovbyk sealing the win with the last kick of the game.

Slavia Ukraini. That was the first thought as the players celebrated with the Ukrainian section in Scotland’s national stadium as the sunset.

Wales is now the only country that can stop Ukraine from fulfilling its dreams and being a World Cup nation again this winter.

The game itself is Wales’ biggest for arguably 64 years as they look to make their 2nd World Cup since 1958. Gareth Bale, who always seems to be the hero for his side, will look to inspire the team one more time as the team looks to make it to back-to-back major tournaments.

There is a fear that Ukraine may be fatigued, having so little match experience and with the hope of the world on their shoulders, some may think Ukraine will buckle.

Ukraine knows how to deal with the pressure. The war-torn nation has defied expectations to survive over and over again. Sunday will be their latest battle and the whole of the world will be behind them.