In seven previous attempts to qualify for the World Cup, the Ukraine national team succeeded only once — under Oleh Blokhin's leadership. He, shortly after taking charge of the national team, made a bold statement about qualifying for the final tournament from first place in their group. And despite skeptics, he fulfilled his promise, and in Germany, at the highest level, led the team to the quarter-finals, where they were defeated only by future champions Italy.

Blokhin made that statement in response to a question reminding of Ukraine's failures in World Cup qualifying shootouts. This was the case in 1997 when we didn't go to France for the World Cup due to Croatia, it happened again in 1999 (Serbia kept us out of Euro), and once more in 2001 (Germany did not heed our slogan "Our goal is 2002").

Overall, in World Cup qualifiers, Ukraine has been below the second step on the podium only once in seven cycles. For the 2006 World Cup we qualified from first place; in five cases, they lost in the playoff stage (besides the mentioned episodes, in 2009 Greece defeated us, in 2013 France did so, and in 2022 Wales).

Ukraine National Team in World Cup Qualifiers

WC-2022    Shevchenko, Petраков     10   3   6   1   14–10   15   loss in playoffs