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Ukraine National Football Team

Head coach: Oleg Blokhin
Captain: Andriy Shevchenko
Top scorer: Andriy Shevchenko
FIFA ranking: 13

The Ukraine national football team is the national football team of Ukraine and is controlled by the Football Federation of Ukraine. After the split of the Soviet Union, they played their first match against Hungary on April 29, 1992.

Prior to the split, Ukrainian players represented the USSR national football team. Some of the best Ukrainian players of the beginning of 1990's (including the likes of Andrei Kanchelskis, Viktor Onopko, Sergei Yuran and Oleg Salenko) chose to play for Russia as it was named the official successor of the USSR, while Ukraine did not participate in major international competitions until 1994. As a result of their desertion and retirement of many notable Soviet Ukrainian-nationality players created a crisis for both the national team as well as the domestic league. Problems were further compounded when Soviet Union's five-year UEFA coefficients, despite being earned in great part by Ukrainian players, were transferred directly to the direct descendent of the Soviet national football team - the Russian national football team.

In the following years, the Ukrainian team improved itself, showcasing talents like Andriy Shevchenko and Serhiy Rebrov, among others. However, Ukraine failed to qualify for any major intercontinental tournament prior to 2005, three times failing at the last qualifying stage, the playoffs, after consecutively finishing 2nd in their qualifying groups. It lost to Croatia, failing to get to the 1998 FIFA World Cup, Slovenia prevented Ukraine from going to Euro 2000, and Germany stopped them prior to the 2002 FIFA World Cup.

After an unsuccessful Euro 2004 qualification campaign, Ukraine appointed Oleg Blokhin as the national team's head coach. Despite initial resentment to his appointment due to his previous poor coaching record and calls for a foreign coach, his appointment eventually proved to be a good move, as Ukraine went on to qualify for their first-ever FIFA World Cup on September 3 2005, by drawing their match with Georgia, 1:1, in T'bilisi. In their first World Cup (2006 FIFA World Cup), Ukraine managed to reach the quarter-finals before losing 3:0 to eventual champions Italy.

Ukraine Team
No.	NAME	POS	Height	Weight	Age
-	Andrei Pyatov	G	6-3	172	22
1	Olexandr Shovkovskiy	G	6-3	190	32
23	Maxim Startsev	G	6-3	170	27
-	Olexander Kucher	D	-	-	24
-	Viacheslav Sviderskiy	D	6-1	176	28
2	Andriy Nesmachniy	D	5-11	159	28
5	Volodymyr Yezerskiy	D	6-0	168	30
6	Andriy Rusol	D	6-1	163	24
8	Oleg Shelayev	D	5-11	154	30
13	Dmytro Chygrynskyy	D	6-3	179	20
17	Vladislav Vashchuk	D	5-11	168	32
3	Olexi Gay	M	5-11	161	24
4	Anatoliy Tymoschuk	M	5-11	154	28
9	Oleg Gusev	M	5-10	161	24
14	Yevgeni Levchenko	M	6-2	170	29
15	Taras Mykhalyk	M	-	-	-
18	Serhiy Nazarenko	M	5-9	150	27
19	Maxim Kalinichenko	M	5-9	148	28
21	Ruslan Rotan	M	5-9	152	25
-	Oleksiy Byelik	S	6-0	168	26
10	Andriy Voronin	S	5-10	165	27
16	Andriy Vorobey	S	5-10	143	28

Group B
	GP	W	D	L	GS	GA	GD	P
France	7	6	0	1	15	2	13	18
Italy	7	5	1	1	13	6	7	16
Scotland	7	5	0	2	13	6	7	15
Ukraine	6	4	0	2	8	6	2	12
Lithuania	7	2	1	4	4	7	-3	7
Georgia	8	2	0	6	13	14	-1	6
Faroe Islands	8	0	0	8	2	27	-25	0