Vitaliy Mykolenko: "Girona did not reveal Tsygankov. He is just a top footballer"

Everton and Ukraine defender Vitaliy Mykolenko spoke about his friend Viktor Tsygankov's career at Spanish side Girona.

- It wasn't Girona who discovered Tsygankov. He is just a top footballer. He shows the same good and stable game as he did at Dynamo. The problem is that at Dynamo, when, for example, he scored 15 goals one season and 14 the next, everyone started writing and talking: "That's it, Vitya has deflated". Before that, Vitya was a legend, a top footballer. And then - Vitya deflated. And you look at the statistics and see that they are only growing. And now at Girona he is showing that he is a top footballer.

I had a similar situation at Dynamo. When Lucescu came in, I played centre-back for the first six months. And I also had to read the comments (I still read them then): "That's it, Mykolenko is bloated, he doesn't score goals, he doesn't give assists". People don't understand what position I play: either as a full-back or a centre-back. I have completely different tasks on the pitch.

In Ukraine, if you play a bad match for Dynamo or the national team, you get 100 negative messages on your Instagram feed. This is not the case in England. Yes, I've had such comments, but maybe I've become more lenient about it or pay less attention to it. There is a feeling that English fans either love you very much or dislike you very much. But, thank God, I haven't had that yet," said Mykolenko.