Live Blog

Fulltime Thoughts – A good final pre-season game for Everton who saw an outstanding debut performance from Dwight McNeil, plenty for Frank Lampard to think about going into next Saturday’s first game of the Premier League season against Chelsea here at Goodison.

90’ – The final whistle has gone, but there’s one more part to today’s charity game. An Everton fan has been selected to come on the pitch and take a penalty; Paul Stratton comes on for Dele and sticks it in the net to a cheer!

82’ – More changes, as Iwobi, Patterson, Tarkowski and Godfrey come off for Nkounkou, Warrington, Mills and Welch.

79’ – Another goal! Assist for the other debuntant Vinagre, as his delightful cross into the box is headed home perfectly from point-blank range by McNeil, 3-0 now!!

73’ – McNeil cuts in and gets the ball, drifts to the left and lets fly from outside the box and it nestles in the far corner! What a goal on debut for the 22-year-old!! Wow, 2-0 to the Blues.

72’ – Another debutant coming on now, as we have a slew of players coming on. Salomon Rondon, Ruben Vinagre and Allan all come on, with Gordon, Mykolenko and Doucoure coming off.

68’ – Patterson blocks a cross for a corner, Tarkowski heads that well clear.

67’ – Dele in the ‘False 9’ is combining well with McNeil, and the Blues are certainly passing the ball much better now.
Good chance for Gordon as he gets into the box on the left, shoots and saved well. A minute later he has another crack at it, and saved again.

65’ – Oooh Holgate. Never too far from a mistake, isn’t he? Gives the ball away straight to an opponent, but then does well to dissuade Vanat from getting a shot off.

62’ – McNeil got a round of applause when he stood up to warm up, and Dele is also stretching now. Dele has changed his shirt to #20, that was announced this morning.
Quite a few changes now – DCL, Gray and Keane off, with Dele, McNeil and Holgate on. McNeil has immediately gone to the right, and Dele is up top. Tarks is central now with Holgate on the left.

52’ – No changes for the Blues and it’s more of the same as Kyiv continue to push for the equalizer.
Everton are not doing a good job of clearing the ball out of their area and a couple of half-chances again for Kyiv.

46’ – Second half underway and the Blues almost score again immediately! Gray’s run down the right sees him in space for a freekick, which swirls dangerously close to the goal and goalkeeper Nescheret almost makes a hash of it, giving away a corner that is cleared.

Halftime Thoughts – We had expected this to be more of a competitive game, but the sombre background to it as well as the experimental lineup means this is not as good an indicator of the Blues’ preparedness for the season as we would have liked.

45+1’ – Corking freekick from over 30 yards away by Andriyevskiy and it’s arrowing into the top corner and an even better save from Pickford! He comes flying across to punch it away! The corner comes to nothing and there’s the halftime whistle, the Blues lead 1-0.

40’ – The experimental midfield is getting overrun here, this is a really good opportunity for Lewis Warrington to come in and take control of it.

39’ – Kyiv looking like Manchester City here passing the ball around in the Blues half and Tarkowski again snuffs out the danger. The ball is not clear though, and eventually a shot from distance that Pickford saves easily.

33’ – Vanat with a slaloming run through the Everton right, and Tarks comes across with a solid challenge to stop him, and then follows the ball to clatter the next man Antiukh too, giving up a corner. The Blues defence has certainly missed that steel.
Corner taken short, and the Blues are able to clear the danger.

30’ – The backline of Michael Keane in the middle, Ben Godfrey on the right and James Tarkowski on the left has looked decent. To be fair though, Kyiv aren’t posing much of a threat either.

26’ – Kyiv win a freekick from the opposite corner just outside the box, Swung in, and headed clear by DCL, and then he follows up by charging the ball down and winning a foul too. Good workrate from him there.

22’ – Freekick from a dangerous area for Kyiv, Myko gets beaten in the air and his man heads over. The fullback is letting the event get to him, he almost got booked for sliding in on a Kyiv player in the other box a minute ago.

18’ – Myko cross blocked for a corner. Mishit by Demarai Gray and it skims into the box, missed by everyone and DCL gets a foot to it and the goalie does very well to parry that over!
Second corner is cleared, Blues get the ball back into the box but Tarkowski is offside.

15’ – The visitors are doing the pushing now as they are passing the ball about in the Everton half.

10’ – Kyiv win a corner on the Everton right which they take short, and they get an easy header go wide. Jordan Pickford is quite unhappy with how uncontested all that was.

6’ – Tarks finds Nathan Patterson who gets the ball to DCL in space, but the striker tries to do too much this time, can’t get a shot off.

4’ – Goal Everton! Naughty there from Dominic Calvert-Lewin! James Tarkowski has showed off his passing range already, and his long ball into the box is headed in by DCL running backwards no less, route one football paying off!

1’ – After a moment of silence in remembrance of all who have lost their lives in this conflict, we’re underway!

Both sides are lined up in the middle of the pitch with Ukraine flags draped around their shoulders, and we have a great atmosphere here at Goodison Park. A lovely picture now that we’ll get to you as soon as we can of the two teams standing together.

Starting Lineups

Vitalii Mykolenko will captain a bit of an experimental side tonight. Frank Lampard has Abdoulaye Doucoure and Alex Iwobi in the middle of his customary 3-4-3 formation. No Yerry Mina, Tom Davies, Jean-Philippe Gbamin or Andre Gomes today, and of course Allan is still recovering from his offseason surgery, so the midfield corps are severely under-strength.

Everton

Subs: Crellin (GK), Lonergan (GK), Holgate, Allan, McNeil, Nkounkou, Dele, Vinagre, Rondon, Warrington, Mills, Welch.

Dynamo Kyiv

Match Preview

It’s been a pretty up-and-down summer for Everton as they close out their pre-season with a friendly against Dynamo Kyiv at Goodison Park tonight with the proceeds from the game being donated to charity to support Ukraine relief efforts from the ongoing war.

The game promises to be particularly emotional for Vitalii Mykolenko who joined the Blues from Dynamo, and the Toffees have donated a significant number of tickets to displaced Ukrainian nationals living in the UK now.

From a match perspective, Frank Lampard has one last chance to work out who is in his best XI and what formation to play them in with the start of the 22/23 Premier League season just over a week away.

Today’s opponents Dynamo are a resilient bunch if nothing else, and the Ukrainian Premier League is planning to get started again behind closed doors next month. The league was suspended last season when the invasion began, and with Kyiv sitting in second they have automatically made it to the Champions League qualifiers coming up, so they will definitely be taking this friendly very seriously.

Match Details

Competition: Summer 2022 pre-season friendly #4

Date and start time: Friday, July 29th at 11:45 a.m. PT / 2:45 p.m ET / 7:45 p.m. BT

Stadium: Goodison Park, Liverpool, England, United Kingdom

Capacity: 39,572

Weather: 69°F/21°C, mostly cloudy, 1% chance of precipitation, 5 mph winds

How to Watch/Listen

TV: ESPN+ – United States; N/A – United Kingdom; DAZN, SuperSport OTT 3, SuperSport Football Plus ROA

Radio: evertontv

Live stream: evertontv, DStv Now,

Gamethread: Live blog above starting one hour before game time

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Information from LiveSoccerTV.com

Last Meeting

The last time the two sides played was in a two-legged affair in the knockout rounds of the Europa League in 2015 when Everton was last in Europe. The Blues had won at home 2-1 but then got soundly spanked 5-2 by Andriy Yarmolenko and his boys in Kyiv to start the downfall of the Blues to their current status.