“It was an incredible, emotional moment for me to spend time with her,” Andriy Shevchenko says as he describes meeting a little Ukrainian girl called Maryna last month. The most famous former footballer from Ukraine, who won the Ballon d’Or in 2004 and the Champions League with Milan before he also coached his country at Euro 2020, pauses as he reflects on a simple encounter where he kicked a football back and forth in hospital with the six-year-old.
The images of their kickaround assume a grainy resonance when it is explained that Maryna had become the first child in Ukraine to receive a prosthetic limb after her leg was blown off by a Russian missile last year. For many weeks she barely moved. Finally, when she was well enough to sit up, her doctors started the slow process of her rehabilitation by using a football. Maryna learned to balance on her prosthetic leg while using her good foot to kick the ball.
For Shevchenko, Maryna represents the courageous spirit of Ukraine but he concedes: “It’s very sad to say it like that because she is so young to have been in that condition. But she shows everyone she’s very strong coming back from a terrible injury. It took her some time, especially emotionally, to recover. But she is so brave.”
The 46-year-old, who won 111 caps for Ukraine, leans forward, his eyes shining with emotion as he describes playing football with Maryna at the Ohmatdyt Children’s Hospital in Kyiv. “I saw her start smiling. The doctor came to me and said: ‘Andriy, she’s been here for four months and we never saw her even smiling.’ Then she gets excited, playing with the ball, and she kicked it back to me with both legs. She was very enthusiastic.
“I saw a lot of kids in the paediatric hospital and many of them were in a very difficult condition. The next day I went to another hospital where I met soldiers, who are really just boys of 18 or 19, and they have no legs, no arms.”
Shevchenko’s four sons are aged between nine and 18 and, on an otherwise ordinary Wednesday afternoon at his home in London, he nods gently when I ask whether this most recent visit to Ukraine made him think of his own boys. “Of course. But I think it’s good we’re speaking because I want the world to understand the damage. The images of destruction and the bombs coming can be seen on television but the personal feeling after you go inside the hospitals is absolutely different. You feel the pain of people. So I want to share with the world what Ukrainian people are feeling.
“These young soldiers are defending the frontline, risking their lives, and there are civilian [casualties] too. When you go to Ukraine you always know it can happen to anyone. You accept that. Everyone who moves inside the war zone knows. But it’s more dangerous to be close to the frontline and you see so many families and young children who stayed there. We need to support these people when they have to recover in hospital. But we also need some human relationships with them, to encourage people after such a difficult injury to have a desire to live, to continue life. Most of them, I’m sure, can recover back to normal life – like Maryna.”
How did Shevchenko try to comfort the young soldiers who had lost limbs in the war? “I just want to give them attention. I walk in, give him a big thank you for his service, for defending Ukraine. It is one of the hardest moments, going to these hospitals, but it becomes a good feeling to say thanks to them from everyone.”
Shevchenko’s words carry even more weight after the latest wave of bombing across Ukraine. In the early hours of Friday Russia fired more than 20 cruise missiles and two drones at Kyiv and other cities. The haunting sound of air raid sirens echoed around a darkened Kyiv for the first time since early March. There are reports of at least 25 more deaths and of children being rescued from the rubble of their destroyed homes.
We return to the early hours of 24 February 2022 when the war began. “I remember going to sleep the night before,” Shevchenko says. “I was very nervous but I still believed it would be OK because it’s impossible they start a war with no reason. Until then we believed that Russia would not attack Ukraine. But I did not feel peaceful. I left my phone close to me because I was in London and my mother was in Kyiv.”
Shevchenko is briefly silent as the memories flood through him. “It was three in the morning for me,” he continues, “and 5am in Ukraine. I open my eyes because my mum phoned me. I already know what it means. You don’t know for how long we’re going to be in this war but you know something terrible has happened. When the first attack started some important military bases around the airports were hit by missiles. My mum lives pretty close to one of them and she felt that explosion and called me immediately. She was scared and disoriented. She was crying and so I knew. War had started.”
His mother and sister left Ukraine six weeks later. “My mum didn’t feel well,” he explains, “and so my sister took her and their two dogs across Ukraine, close to the border. When they could they crossed the border and went to Italy. So they are safe but they have been three times back in Ukraine. They go back and forth. We all do. I try to go to Ukraine every month.”
The family’s close links with Italy are rooted in his successful years with Milan. Shevchenko scored 173 goals in 296 games between 1999 and 2006, reaching two Champions League finals. In 2003 he scored Milan’s winning penalty in a dramatic shootout in the final against Juventus while, two years later, his spot-kick at the same stage was saved by Jerzy Dudek in the Liverpool goal. That missed penalty meant Liverpool won the shootout, having been 3-0 down at half-time of normal time and with their 3-3 draw secured only by Dudek’s incredible double save from Shevchenko in extra time.
This season has sparked such memories for Shevchenko again and it’s striking that we only stop talking about the war in Ukraine to discuss Milan’s unexpected progress to the semi-finals. Next month they play Internazionale in a Champions League derby which reminds Shevchenko of the 2003 semi-final. He scored the vital away goal against Inter which helped Milan reach the final.
“They are fantastic memories,” Shevchenko says with a smile, “and Milan have a big chance to repeat the story against Inter again.”
He is enough of a Milan supporter to believe that they could shock everyone by winning the Champions League – even though Manchester City or Real Madrid would await in the final. “I watched how Milan played those two quarter-final games against Napoli like a mature team,” he says. “I say mature because, when they had to suffer, Milan would close the gap, defend, work as a team, covering a lot of distance and fight. And then they could strike when the chances came. These games are so close but there is a maturity to the team. I think Milan could do it because they have good players and a very strong team spirit.”
Shevchenko is an astute and intelligent coach, who did excellent work in guiding Ukraine to the quarter-finals of the Covid-delayed Euro 2020, where they lost to England in Rome in the summer of 2021. When he took over as national coach they had just emerged from a miserable tournament at Euro 2016 after losing all three group games and failing to score. Shevchenko drew on everything he had learned from his managerial mentor Valeriy Lobanovskyi, who had helped Dynamo Kyiv become a force in Europe in the 70s and 80s.
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When Shevchenko played under Lobanovskyi at Dynamo he became intensely serious about football. “He gave me the understanding that there are no trifles in football,” Shevchenko said. “No detail of the work can be ignored. I listened to him with my mouth open, catching every word.”
Shevchenko’s knowledge deepened during his years in Italy when he was coached by Alberto Zaccheroni and then Carlo Ancelotti, who became his second mentor. The lessons he learned from Italian football shaped his work in revitalising Ukraine. It would have been fascinating to discover how Shevchenko might have done in club management but his brief stint at Genoa lasted just over two months, and nine league games, before he was sacked after a defeat by Milan in January 2022.
Five weeks later Vladimir Putin declared war on Ukraine and the first bombs rained down on Kyiv. Shevchenko’s determination to help raise awareness of the unjust conflict means that any return to coaching has been delayed. His immersion in the war effort is deep and so there is no time to analyse the current fiasco at Chelsea, where Shevchenko battled with injury and form during an unsuccessful spell from 2006 to 2009. We do not get a chance to discuss how Roman Abramovich, who was once close to Putin, had pursued Shevchenko relentlessly before he signed him from Milan.
We also don’t have time to reflect on his happier times at Dynamo, where he developed into the lethal striker who lit up European football. I would love to ask Shevchenko about the night in 1997 when, aged just 21, he scored a Champions League hat-trick in the first half for Dynamo against Barcelona at the Camp Nou. The war, instead, is too consuming for such memories.
“As soon as the war started,” Shevchenko says, “my mum and my sister were packed, with their small luggage, ready to go any time. My aunt also spent 10 days under the shelter, hiding from missiles in the first months of the war. I know families who didn’t even have time to pack or take their passports. They had to [flee] because danger was coming. We did this as a family when I was very young [Shevchenko was nine when his family had to leave their village near Chornobyl and move to Kyiv in 1986] but that was a nuclear disaster. This is a war and if you had asked me a few years ago if this could happen I would say: ‘No.’”
Has he lost friends in the war? “Yes,” Shevchenko says. “A few close friends. But I know people who have lost much more.”
Amid grief and pain he and Oleksandr Zinchenko, Ukraine’s captain who has been a revelation for Arsenal this season, have set up their Football for Ukraine initiative which aims to raise funds for the war effort. “We already did a lot of different projects together,” he says of Zinchenko and himself. “Now we’re preparing something big with this project to raise support for Ukrainian people. We already did a project in [the war-torn city of] Irpin with UNITED24.”
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy set up UNITED24 to give people around the world an easy and direct way to support Ukraine’s military efforts, enhance medical aid and help finance the rebuilding of the country. “We raised funds to rebuild the football stadium in Irpin and I think the impact of sport is very important,” Shevchenko says as an ambassador for UNITED24. “It can bring something different to people, and help them escape the war for a little bit. Oleksandr has been incredible. I’m very proud of him because he’s young and he has a very young family, with a baby, but he has given so much support to Ukraine. He’s not only tried to find the funds but he speaks loud about Ukraine. He has stayed so strong.”
As his former national‑team manager, has Shevchenko helped Zinchenko adjust to the trauma of having to address the war again and again? “When we talk I try to tell him; ‘Don’t hold the emotion. Let it out. There’s nothing to hold. We have to show the truth. We are here to show the world exactly what Ukrainian people are feeling.’ It has been difficult for everyone but, every time we speak, I always remind him: ‘We have to be a lot stronger. We have to help our people in Ukraine because they need us. We have to bring attention to the war.’”
Does the endless grind, with Russian aggression continuing no matter how heroically the Ukrainian army pushes them back, leave Shevchenko feeling depressed? “I am much stronger now. I know we have to just carry on. At the beginning of the war, and for the first four months there was a lot of hard stuff for me. But I can’t complain because I know on the frontline the soldiers have to face so much and families in Ukraine have to evacuate dangerous areas which have been hit by missiles. We went through an incredible year, the winter was so difficult, and with the first big blackout in Ukraine I was there, in Kyiv.
“But we defend our country and this gives us such power. We know the entire democratic world is behind us. But this is a good moment for me to remind everyone that the war keeps going.
“Please help share the Maryna story. These are our people, our children and our soldiers, who are losing their lives or being badly injured. It’s important the entire world keeps helping us. We still have a strong spirit – and that spirit will help us to defend Ukraine and win in the end.”
