By: Kayleigh Toney
BLACKSBURG - Virginia Tech women's soccer player Nicole Kozlova is now in Murcia, Spain with the Ukraine Women's National team to take part in the Pinatar Cup. The team will play its first game this afternoon against Scotland - Click here to watch.
The Pinatar Cup will run from March 1-11 with four teams participating, with each team guaranteed to play three matches in the competition. After Wednesday's match, Ukraine will return to action on Saturday, March 7 to face Northern Ireland. The team will wrap up the tournament against No. 18 Iceland on Tuesday, March 10.
Three out of the four teams in the Cup find themselves ranked in the top 30 of the FIFA World Rankings, No. 27 Ukraine, No. 18 Iceland and No. 22 Scotland. The matches will serve as a warm-up for Ukraine before they play more qualifying matches in April for the 2021 Euros.
"We're playing a really good, strong team, but it's a good challenge in the sense where it's not like Germany or Spain," Kozlova said prior to the trip. "It's not gonna be an easy game, it will be a good way to push us. I'm really excited about that."
Last fall, Kozlova attended a camp in Turkey where she played a full 90 minutes in one match, scoring a hat trick against a local Turkish professional team and then starting and playing 45 minutes in the second match against the Turkish national team. She credits that camp as the one where she really started to integrate herself into the team.
"That was the first trip where I really felt like I was part of the team, it's been hard just being like the newest and the youngest," Kozlova said. "A lot of the girls play together in professional teams so it's always been a little hard to kind of integrate myself. When you're playing it's obviously easier and that was a really good trip for me."
Kozlova is hoping to use these friendlies to help earn her spot in the starting lineup for Euros qualifying.
"I'm excited to go see some of the girls and be back with the team," she said. "Later on this spring, we have important games going on and I'm really hoping that I can fight for a starting spot in those games, all these friendlies the main goal is kind of showing myself more and integrating myself more into the team."
A couple added bonuses come to spending time in Spain for national team camp for Kozlova. She was able to attend the El Clasico (the match between fierce rivals FC Barcelona and Real Madrid) before heading off to the camp. After the camp wraps, she will stay in Spain a little longer and visit with Hokie alum Jaylyn Thompson, who is playing for Zaragoza CFF, a team that competes in the Liga Reto Iberdrola in Spain.