He struggled at Dynamo Kyiv as a 13-year-old but was soon hailed as 'the new Shevchenko'. Meet Andriy Yarmolenko
This article is part of the Guardian's Euro 2012 Experts' Network, a co-operation between 16 of the best media organisations from the countries who have qualified for the finals in Poland and Ukraine. guardian.co.uk is running previews from two countries each day in the run-up to the tournament kicking off on 8 June.
On that cold March night Andriy Yarmolenko felt particularly gloomy. His Dynamo Kyiv side had just struggled to beat lowly Vorskla, winning 1-0 in the end, and he had been so poor that he had been substituted in the first half. He clearly was not in the mood to speak to the media but a local TV company insisted and bombarded him with questions. What had gone wrong during the game? Why were Dynamo playing so badly? And why had he been taken off?
Yarmolenko refused to answer several times before one journalist said: "You owe it as a footballer, as a public person, to answer these questions." Yarmolenko did not even raise his eyes to look at the inquisitor, he just said: "No, I am not a football player" and walked away.
What he meant was that he was not like other footballers and that he was not even sure whether he was cut out to make it in the professional game. And Dynamo's fans, at the time, would have agreed. It was his first season as a regular at the club and he was not capable of producing his best football. The pressure seemed to have got to him and the fans were on his back.
The jokers got down to business, with jibes such as "You say you are not a footballer? Well, we knew that a long time ago" and other broadsides. It even got so bad that the Dynamo president, Ihor Surkis, banned Yarmolenko talking to the press for a period of time.
Two years on and Yarmolenko has transformed himself completely to become Ukraine's main hope as they prepare to take on England, France and Sweden in Euro 2012. He has also been linked with a move to Liverpool. For a player who was called "the new Shevchenko" at 17, Yarmolenko has gone from heaven to hell – and back to heaven again.
Yarmolenko's career path has not been straight-forward. Far from it. When he was 13 he joined Dynamo Kyiv on a youth contract, only to move back to Desna a year later, unable to cope with the physical demands of the Premier League club. For many, that would be it as far as a football career was concerned but Yarmolenko was suddenly thrust into the spotlight four years later, when he was still minding his own business with Desna.
On that day in 2006, the Dynamo coach, Anatoliy Demiyanenko, was facing awkward questions at a press conference about why he never gave any young players the chance to prove themselves. Suddenly, the club spokesman, Alexei Semenenko, interrupted the conversation and said proudly: "I was recently informed that 130km away from Kiev, our scouts have found the boy who is already being called 'the new Shevchenko' by experts".
No one was told the name of this "new Shevchenko" until the next day, when the papers found out that Semenenko had meant Yarmоlenko. Since that day and until he made his debut for the Dynamo first team, he has been nicknamed "the boy from 130km away".
Yarmolenko was born in in Russia where his parents worked but they returned to their home in Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union. "I was born in St. Petersburg, which then was called Leningrad, but I don't remember much about those years," Yarmolenko has said. "I was only three years old when my family returned to Ukraine. As far as I am concerned I only have one nationality, and I never thought about playing for Russia."
He was clearly a talented footballer, hence the offer to join Dynamo at the age of 13, but the failed experience in the capital made him reflect on what was important for him at the time. "I missed my parents. My thoughts were not on football, but on the desire to see my loved ones. I guess I came to Kiev too early.
"I felt that I was too weak and that I wasn't getting any stronger physically. It was a difficult time for me. Later I realised that the decision to return to Chernihiv was the right one." There were no hard feelings from Dynamo and they did the right thing, allowing him to return to Chernihiv rather than accepting offers from other clubs.
He continued to develop and felt mentally ready to return to Dynamo at the age of 17, but the "new Shevchenko" tag is somewhat unfair. Shevchenko was (and still is) famous for his predatory instinct in front of goal, his ability to read the game and to get into the right position in the penalty area. Yarmolenko, however, is not a natural goalscorer. He can play in most positions in attack, but during his 18 months in Dynamo's second team he scored only eight goals.
Once he got the chance in the first team, however, he did not have to wait long for his first goal. Towards the end of the 2007-08 season the head coach, Yuriy Semin, decided to give the young Yarmolenko a chance away to Vorskla Poltava. The striker responded by scoring the winner.
The following season was a struggle for Yarmolenko with Semin once again preferring more experienced players to the raw teenager. But then Semin was replaced by another Russian, Valeriy Gazzaev, who re-introduced Yarmolenko to the first team and was also able to bring back Shevchenko from Chelsea.
Gazzaev favoured a 4-3-3 formation and he felt that Yarmolenko could play on the wing (a perception not shared by the fans who saw the tall, strong, energetic youngster as a central striker). During pre-season Yarmolenko was even tried in left-back, to his obvious discomfort.
He slowly started to look more comfortable on the left. The media and the fans were giving him a hard time but at least his coach believed in him. After Yarmolenko's debut in the first team, he said: "I would particularly like to thank my first coach [at Desna] and Valeriy Gazzaev, because it was he who believed in me. And when he became the head coach of Dynamo, I got into the starting XI."
Gazzaev never paid any attention to the media or the fans and that unfortunate first-half substitution against Vorskla was one of the few times Gazzaev's belief in the player wavered. No wonder Yarmolenko has remained so grateful.
Having won a permanent place in Dynamo's first team, it did not take long before Yarmolenko made his debut with the national team. Again, he scored quickly, in both games against Andorra, but ran into trouble for his performance in the World Cup play-offs against Greece in 2009, which Ukraine lost.
With Dynamo, however, Yarmolenko continued to develop. Every season he has improved and after his second season he said: "It felt really nice to silence the critics. I read the [critical] comments on various fan sites with a smile now. Of course, there are those who continue to look down on me, but there are fewer of them out there now."
Even the return of Yarmolenko's former nemesis, Semin, could not halt his progress. He impressed so much, in fact, that Semin gave him a much freer role and now Yarmolenko can often be seen on any of the flanks, behind the striker and even in the centre of attack.
In the Ukrainian youth teams, Yarmolenko had often played together with another great talent – Yevhen Konoplyanka from Dnipro, who is also left winger. The coach of the Ukrainian Under-21 team, Pavlo Yakovenko, thought long and hard about how to solve this problem and then began to use one striker and two wingers, of which he moved the left-footed Yarmolenko to the right flank. That is also how the senior team has used Yarmolenko on several occasions.
"Frankly speaking, it is even easier for me to attack from the right flank of midfield, I can move to the centre and create a chance with a favourable foot," he says. So Yarmolenko's current position on the pitch does not allow for him to be called the new Shevchenko, but then he never wanted such a nickname. "I do not want to be the 'new Shevchenko' - I want to be Yarmolenko," he says.
For the 22-year-old this Euro 2012 finals feels like make or break on the international scene. He can be inconsistent, he can be frustrating and he can be ineffective. But he can also be brilliant and this summer he can try himself against some of the best players in the world. He will relish the challenge, and these days every one in Ukraine knows that he is comfortable in his role as footballer, unlike the shy 17-year-old who refused to look into the television camera after having been hauled off in the first half.
Igor Boyko, Aleksey Ivanov and Yuriy Shevchenko, write for football.ua and Football Style magazine
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