The famous journalist Mykola Nesenyuk - about how the topic of money in sports replaces the topic of sports itself.
"In modern sport, which exists historically recently - some one and a half hundred years, there have always been fights for titles. Athletes, either individually or as part of a team, sought to become champions, win a cup, set a record. Once it was done solely for the sake of prestige, later titles, cups and medals began to be accompanied by money.
You can go to the website of this or that international or foreign sports federation or league (Ukrainian is not offered) and find out how much money certain winners and prize-winners will receive. All this is written somewhere in the corner in small print. Because that's not the point. The main thing is to win! Title! Cup! Record! This is exactly why we love sports.
Of course, the earnings of athletes are disproportionate. There are competitions where crazy millions go, and there are those that pay very little. It depends on the popularity or, as they say now, the "publicity" of certain competitions. Of course, we cheer for our team and are happy when one of the Ukrainians wins somewhere, although it doesn't happen very often. Even when a Ukrainian becomes a champion, playing for a non-Ukrainian team, it is also pleasing to many.
This is how national football fans are proud of all our outstanding teams and football players. Out of competition, at least in the current generation, is clearly Andriy Shevchenko, who won titles in Ukraine playing for Dynamo, and then did the same in Italy playing for Milan. At the club level, he won everything there is to win!
And now the question is, do you know how much money Shevchenko moved from team to team, how much money he received under the contract and so on? I'm sure it's unlikely. Even the most devoted fans, sorry, "Shevy", will not count his millions without a hint. And no one needs it - Shevchenko is known and respected for his game that impressed the whole world and for the titles he helped his teams win.
Unfortunately, nowadays we have the opposite picture. Football fans of Ukraine today do not count the titles and trophies of domestic football players, which they won while playing abroad, but the amount of their salaries and the millions that the clubs paid for their transfers. Even the plates are made, calculating which of them is "more expensive". But what about football? What and when did those football characters around whom fans now argue, trying to forget about the war, win?
Or maybe you shouldn't? Can we leave the right to count money to the football players themselves, their agents and relatives? Instead, let's hope that with their game for crazy money, they will make us forget about this money. To simply enjoy playing Ukrainians for European teams and be happy for them when they win something with those teams. And we have a lot of them! But for some reason no one remembers the fact that Ukrainians Kharatin and Zubkov became champions of Hungary several times. And the list goes on. Maybe Zinchenko will become the champion of England again this year, about the size of his contract, for some reason, we don't write about it every day. And why is it interesting?" Nesenyuk wrote on his Facebook page.