Renowned football expert Oleksandr Sopko assessed the performances of Ukrainian legionnaires in European championships in 2023.
- Who would you call the legionnaire of the year?
- Most likely, Tsygankov, he has been at Girona a little longer than Dovbyk, and has managed to win the love and respect of the fans. Both his credibility and price have increased, although there were many sceptics who wondered where and what kind of club Girona was. And the team is beating Barcelona, and the coach is rumoured to be being wooed to Barcelona. And it is possible that Girona is not Tsygankov's last club.
If we look at the marketing component, then Mykhailo Mudryk's move to Chelsea definitely broke all records. It happens, in particular, in English clubs nowadays, when there is just financial madness, everyone wants to win, clubs buy, resell, and inject a lot of money.
But at the same time, this puts a lot of pressure on the player himself, because fans will not miss an opportunity to throw a stone in the player's garden when he has a bad game - why they bought you, how much you are worth. It is very difficult to be in such an environment, especially if there are competitors who also want to play, who know how to play. And if you lose your place in the squad, you may not get it back at all.
The transfer is high-profile, a record-breaking one for us, but it also hides a danger, because our next players will be viewed through the prism of this particular transfer.
- Which of the Ukrainian legionnaires do you consider to be the disappointment of the year?
- Roman Yaremchuk cannot find himself. He is a potentially strong player who had good seasons. It's hard to say what the reason is, usually a big reason accumulates a number of small reasons. Perhaps he overestimated himself and his capabilities somewhere, or maybe he has some personal problems. Plus, any lease or transfer means a new challenge, a new team, a new coach. After all, not all coaches want to see you in the squad, many bet on their own. Different teams, different styles of play. And when you go around looking for your team like that, you can waste your whole career. That's why it's a pity that Yaremchuk is not only not developing, but somewhere there is even stagnation in his game. In any case, he is a footballer with abilities. And if he believes in himself, his age still allows him to find his team.
- A potential legionnaire of the year who literally knocks on the doors of European championships from the Ukrainian league?
- There are a lot of them, because there are players on the rise, whom we would also like to buy and then grow, and there are established ones. I think that players of Pikhalenko's level can already play in a good European club. Ruslan Babenko, for example, is not much talked about, but Dnipro-1 is largely based on the play of this player. I'm not talking about the players from Shakhtar and Dynamo who are on the scouts' radar.
Yevhen SAVCHUK