“What If I Had Stayed?” — Bohdan Vyunnyk on His Dynamo Past

Ukrainian midfielder of the Polish “Lechia” Bohdan Vyunnyk talked about a part of his career spent in Kyiv’s “Dynamo”.

— You have a somewhat atypical biography. Many graduates of the “Metalist” academy, born in the early 2000s, later transitioned elsewhere. How did it happen that Bohdan Vyunnyk ended up in both the “Dynamo” and “Shakhtar” schools?

— It’s an interesting story. I always believed in myself, but I would have never said that I would play in all these top academies. I’ll share an exclusive — before “Dynamo”, I could have ended up at “Dnipro”, but together with my parents, we decided to stay at “Metalist”, and the next season (in 2016) I moved to “Dynamo”.

— Why didn’t you choose “Dnipro”?

— At “Metalist”, the financial situation was not that bad at that time. No, I won’t say that I earned anything. It was just that the academy provided food, light, water, and we participated in tournaments. Everything we needed was there.

However, I am originally from Kharkiv, and at one point, I moved to the academy because they said that all the main players had to live at the base. Later, they stopped providing good food, and I was told that I had to return home so it would be a bit easier for the students from other cities.

In the summer, my parents and I decided to go to “Dynamo”. At that time, Alberto Bosch came to the “Dynamo” academy, and I was invited.

— Just a year later, you were at “Shakhtar”. Was that the right decision, or should you have stayed at the capital club?

— You know, I asked myself the question: “What would have happened if I had stayed?”. But I don’t regret anything, as I experienced the best moments of my life in the academy and the main team of “Shakhtar”. I also liked it at “Dynamo”, so I cannot even tell where it was better.

— What are the differences between the schools of the two Ukrainian giants?

— In terms of the level of the academies, they are not that different. The difference is that “Dynamo” had a Spanish style, while “Shakhtar” initially had a Spanish style that later shifted to a Portuguese one.

Oleksandr Shcherbatykh