Yuriy Shelepnytsky, who led the players of the Ukrainian national team with the captain's armband to the first match in its history, told us whether he would accept the offer to take Russian citizenship and whether he is in contact with Yuriy Nikiforov.
Yuriy Shelepnytsky- Later, a number of players from the team that played against Hungary received an offer to play for the Russian national team, some agreed, some did not. Have you ever been offered to change your citizenship to Russian?
- No, I was not offered. I went to Turkey, to Trabzonspor. There were no such offers. I am one hundred per cent sure that at that time I would never have agreed.
- Do you consider it a betrayal that your teammates Yurii Nikiforov and Oleg Salenko later joined the Russian national team?
- Now we can draw deep conclusions about this, but at the time it all happened very quickly. They were the people who decided to play at the 1994 World Cup, and they had to play there because Russia was the successor to the USSR. They were invited and went to this forum. A trip to the World Cup, the European Championships and the Olympics can be a once-in-a-lifetime experience for an athlete. This is their choice, there is no point in talking about political issues here, they wanted to prove themselves in a footballing way.
- Do you keep in touch with Yuriy Nikiforov? What is his position on Russia's war against Ukraine?
- I communicate with his older brother Oleksandr, he is now in Odesa, a respectable man, he works, he recently celebrated his anniversary. I send him greetings, he sends me greetings, but we don't communicate that way. I think he lives in Spain, but there was a time when he was invited to coach in Russia, not as a head coach, but to help some of his former partners. He was playing at Spartak, and some of his teammates had become top-class coaches and, I think, invited him to coach with them. Sasha told me that he was an assistant coach, and maybe he still is, but I'm not interested in such things. He is more in Spain than in Russia.
Andrii Pavlenko.
