Ukraine's hopes of a top-two finish in Group C have been left in tatters after going into half time 1-0 down at home to Spain.

Slovakia's 3-0 lead over Luxembourg elsewhere this evening means that Mykhaylo Fomenko's men now require a miracle.

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The home side had a fine chance to open the scoring inside the first five minutes when Artem Kravets drilled an effort into the back-post area, which Andriy Yarmolenko could not quite direct goalwards.

A much-changed Spain side, which included just one survivor from last time out in Cesc Fabregas, could themselves have taken the lead soon after when Fabregas - on his 100th international appearance - fired over when placed under some pressure.

All the onus was very much on the hosts to keep their automatic qualification hopes alive, and they very did so if not for David de Gea's fine double stop to keep out Kravets and Ruslan Rotan in quick succession.

It was Spain who pushed on and opened the scoring, though, thanks to debutant Mario Gaspar who headed home Thiago Alcantara's back-post cross.

Fabregas had a great chance to double his side's advantage just a couple of minutes later from the spot after being brought down, but he failed to get the better of Andriy Pyatov in front of watching Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho.

Denys Garmash and Kravets both had chances to level things up prior to the break, yet the Yellow-Blue struggled to find a way through and headed into the interval a goal behind.

Written by
Daniel Lewis