Former Dynamo Valerii Lobanovskyi CYSS coach Serhii Velychko told us where he found defender Ilya Zabarnyi and forward Vladyslav Vanat.
Serhiy Velychko. Photo: fcdynamo.com- It is said that it was you who found Ilya Zabarny. Can you be considered his first coach?
- I was working then since 2002. I already had Vladyslav Vanat in my team, and as for Ilya Zabarnyi... Every year I went around Kyiv looking for guys in all the districts, watching matches. I'm from Troyeshchyna, so I often went to the matches there by bike. There was a children's club of the same name there, where I saw Zabarnyi.
- How did Ilya stand out among the others, what attracted your attention?
- He stood out from the other kids because of his intelligence, technique and speed. I liked him, talked to his father and the coaches who worked with him, and eventually invited him to Dynamo. In fact, that was my job: to recruit children and work with them until they turn 10, and then put them in the hands of other coaches. It's not an easy job, because you had to find these kids somewhere, teach them technique, develop their physical qualities and give them a chance to move on.
Ilya's father told me that they would stay in Troyeshchyna for the time being and then contact me. At the end of June, I think it was 2012, I received a call from his father, who agreed to his son's transfer to Dynamo. His family was going on holiday at the time, and I told them: "Please go, your son will 100% play at Dynamo, given the abilities he has."
However, Ilya under my guidance only had a test and one or two training sessions, as I had to train the team born in 2002.
After me, Zabarnyi fell into the hands of Serhii Zhuravlev, with whom he trained for a year or two, and in Troyeshchyna he was coached by Yurii Teplytskyi, who now works at the Champion Children's and Youth Sports School (Darnytsia).
- Zabarnyi very quickly became a player in the Dynamo first team.
- I was surprised myself how it happened so quickly. He had just graduated from the academy and immediately got into the first team. So, it was not for nothing that I invited him to Dynamo when he was young.
- Ilya is now a player at Bournemouth. Does the English Championship suit him?
- I need him to play in the starting line-up all the time. He is naturally gifted in terms of physics, speed, thinking - you can't take that away from him. However, it seems to me that Ilya needs to work on his character. What do I mean by character? He needs to be tougher, bolder.
I think that if he has a stable playing practice this season, he will definitely progress and receive an invitation from a very good English club.
- You have been working together with Vanat for a long time.
- Yes. He came to me for recruitment, and I immediately noticed that he was fast, active, has a stubborn character, and is left-footed. I thought at the time: "Wow, we will have a good striker". I immediately told his parents that he should join Dynamo and play. The timing was already tight, as the championship was about to start. But his parents said they were not local, they were from Kamianets-Podilskyi. I replied: "Either you come to the matches (training on Friday and the game on Saturday) or rent an apartment." At first they travelled, and only then did they rent an apartment.
- Continuing with the topic of Vladyslav's character. He has been criticised enough for his alleged excessive aggression, for example, in the game against Romania at the Euro 2023 Youth Championship, when he earned a red card in the last minutes. However, what good striker can be a 'paira'?
- My opinion is that all football stars have character. Take the likes of Stoichkov, Ronaldo, Messi - all personalities with character. Without such a character, even a "prickly" character, there is nothing to do in football. Remember how Ibrahimovic played: he would touch someone, hit someone... You have to be able to work with such players.
- This season, Vanat already has good statistics: three goals and two assists in five matches. Can he become the best scorer in the UPL?
- I'll tell you more. If he had been included in the first team for every game last season, he would have been Dynamo's best scorer for sure, and probably even the best in the UPL. His statistics are solid. Remember that in the U-21 championship, he broke Oleksandr Aliyev's record (which stood for 14 years) by scoring 26 goals in a season.
If he is given a chance to play in the starting line-up of the national team of Ukraine, he will be one of the best there. He needs to be guided, to find an approach to him. Vladyslav is very emotional, passionate and always wants to score. We need to develop these qualities, support him, and not punish or criticise him, as we did after the red card against Romania.
- But former Dynamo coach Jozsef Szabo said that Vanat is a weak footballer, and if the team had a normal striker, Vladyslav would be on the bench.
- Still, Sabo has a lot of experience, he has his own vision. Perhaps I should say this in the context of the fact that the level of Ukrainian football has dropped dramatically, which is why legionnaires have left and why our guys are playing. So let our guys play at last!
If Vanat was the best scorer in the history of the understudy championship, how can he be a weak footballer? It turns out to be a contradiction. This excessive criticism hits young players very hard. He needs to play and then people will pay attention to him, just as they did to Mykolenko and Zabarnyi.
Vladyslav LUTOSTANSKYI
