Turkey vs Ukraine preview

June 4, 2012
By: Matthew Clarke

Turkey should have a huge support from the stands when they face Ukraine in Ingolstadt, Germany and that can give them an advantage over the Euro 2012 co-hosts.

Coach Abdullah Avci has been experimenting with his line-up in recent friendlies, but that didn’t stop his side from beating the likes of Georgia, Bulgaria and Portugal on the travels.

Turkey were only beaten by Finland on neutral ground, but everybody around the national team can be very optimistic before the start of the 2014 World Cup qualifiers.

Following the impressive 3-1 victory over Portugal, Abdullah Avci’s side will be looking to continue the trend and they are 2.63 (13/8) with Stan James to beat Ukraine as well.

Selcuk Inan, Nuri Sahin, Gokhan Tore and Egemen Korkmaz should all start as boss Avci continues to rotate his squad.

Probable starting line-up (4-4-2): Bolat – Gonul, Korkmaz, Toprak, Koybasi – Tore, Inan, Sahin, Erkin – Pektemek, Torun.

Euro 2012 co-hosts have been pretty impressive of late, but the 3-2 defeat to Austria did have a negative effect on the squad.

Ukraine now need to try and beat Turkey in order to restore some of the lost confidence and bet365 has them at 2.88 (17/9) to do so.

The Eastern European side face a tough task at the European Championship, with the likes of France, England and Sweden in their group, but home-based football pundits believe this team have what it takes to produce an upset.

After fielding almost exactly the same starting line-up in the last two friendlies, boss Oleg Bolokhin is set to do the same against Turkey, which means star forward Andriy Shevchenko will start on the bench.

Probable starting line-up (4-2-3-1): Pyatov – Gusev, Mykhalyk, Khacheridi, Rakitsky – Tymoshchuk, Nazarenko – Yarmolenko, Voronin, Konoplyanka – Devic.

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