Andriy Shevchenko's political ambition may break spell of Ukraine icon

It was just as Kenneth Branagh was finishing his Isambard Kingdom Brunel as Caliban piece and the chimneys were replacing the bucolic ideal in the Olympic opening ceremony that the news began to come through: Andriy Shevchenko was retiring from football to take up a career in politics. In a sense, of course, it's no great surprise.

He's 35 and has been struggling with injuries for some time – but still, there seemed something appropriate about word coming at just that point. Innocence, the days of grass and frolics, gone and replaced by something probably necessary, perhaps even exciting, but undeniably dirty.

Shevchenko himself left his bucolic ideal when he was three. He had been born in the tiny village of Dvirkivschyna, 60 miles east of Kiev on Ukraine's vast central plain, and family members remember even there he'd always be kicking a ball, whacking it against the wall of the drying house in the yard. But his father was an ensign in a tank regiment and had to move to Kiev and Shevchenko's playground became the waste lots of the capital. He was spotted playing in a game between neighbouring housing associations by the Dynamo Kyiv youth coach Oleksandr Shpakov.

What followed is well-known. Shevchenko was only moderately good aged 11 or 12 but applied himself with extraordinary dedication. His father wanted him to go into the army. He was evacuated to Azov following the accident at Chernobyl. Shpakov persuaded his father that football was a good way for Shevchenko to get fit before going into the army. He was rejected by Kiev University of Physical Education after failing to pass a series of tests. Dynamo took him on anyway and a year later the university waved him through the testing process.

He made his debut for Dynamo when he was 18, coming on as a second-half substitute in a 3-1 win away to Shakhtar Donetsk on 8 November 1994. His ability was immediately obvious. He won a Ukrainian title in each of his five seasons with the club and produced devastating Champions League performances against Barcelona in 1997-98 and Real Madrid in 1998-99. He won the Champions League and Serie A with Milan before the move to Chelsea, when it all began to go wrong.

Until then, he'd never really endured a bad run but that transfer was hit by a perfect storm. He was injured in the March but forced himself to return to play in the World Cup, perhaps before he was entirely ready. That was the first major tournament in which he'd taken part; just as he was reaching an age when he most needed rest, he missed a full close season for the first time in his career. He was moving into a new culture and a new environment and, as Andriy Kanchelskis once pointed out, the second move is often harder than the first (partly because the player is older and thus more resistant to new tricks, and partly because the assumption is that having successfully moved once doing it again shouldn't present a problem). And, of course, he was moving to a club whose manager made it pretty clear he didn't want him.

So it was back for a season on loan at Milan and the long wind-down back at Kyiv. His final game came in the city of his first: Donetsk, for Ukraine's 1-0 defeat to England at the Euros. He was ineffective then, but he had already enjoyed his great moment, shaking off the fatigue of the ages to score two headers in quick succession against Sweden, to light up the Olympiyskiy in Kyiv, the stadium that had been his first and his last home.

However popular and successful he was at Milan, it was Kyiv that formed him, there that Valeriy Lobanovskyi turned him into his idea of "a universal player". The popular conception of Shevchenko is of a goalscorer and, of course, he was that, powerful, quick, a good finisher and a clever header of a ball. He averaged a goal every other game throughout his career and scored a Ukrainian record 48 international goals – a mark that is unlikely to be matched any time soon. But he was more than that. For much of his Dynamo career, he played behind Serhiy Rebrov, although in the last season or so they interchanged roles. At Milan, he willingly drifted right to allow Pippo Inzaghi to play centrally on the defensive line. Even in those final days back at Dynamo, when his pace was gone and he seemed at times merely a man who looked a bit like Shevchenko, he would often play in the hole or on the right. He was flexible, adaptable, the most complete striker since Marco van Basten; he was, as Lobanovskyi had demanded, "universal".

The move into politics is not entirely unexpected. It is relatively common for Ukrainian celebrities to become MPs. The former world heavyweight boxing champion Vitali Klitschko, for instance, heads his own party, is a member of the Ukrainian delegation to the congress of the council of Europe and is a regular critic of the president, Viktor Yanukovych, and the Ukraine coach Oleh Blokhin has served as an MP.

In the late 90s the entire Dynamo squad publicly backed the Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (united). It was partly led by Hryhoriy Surkis, the head of the Ukrainian football federation and the brother of Ihor Surkis, the president of Dynamo. Shevchenko endorsed Yanukovych before the 2004 election and during the orange revolution that followed, the SDPU (u) pursued a pro-Russian, anti-EU policy, opposing Yanukovych's rival Viktor Yushchenko. The party Shevchenko has joined is Ukraine – Forward, the modern incarnation of the SDPU (u).

Led by Natalya Korolevska, Ukraine – Forward had been part of the Bloc Yulia Tymoschenko, but after Tymoschenko was jailed – on charges widely believed in western Europe to have been politically motivated.

Korolevska fell out with the new leaders of the BYuT, who accused her of secretly co-operating with Yanukovych's government. Ukraine – Forward is seen as being pro-business and has campaigned for the release of Tymoschenko.

Exactly what role Shevchenko will take remains to be seen. There's always the fear, of course, when footballers move into politics, whether they be in football or the wider world, that they will stain their reputation – as Michel Platini seems intent on doing as Uefa president. Perhaps Shevchenko will use his celebrity, as Klitschko has, to campaign against abuses by the police and problems within the judiciary, but there's no guarantee. So now, before it's too late, is probably the perfect time to remember what a magnificent footballer Shevchenko was. But he is more than that. He has replaced the 19th-century nationalist poet Taras Shevchenko as the icon of Ukraine.

He has a public role and it may be that politics is the best way he can serve that. But Ukrainian politics, it's fair to say, has not historically been a paradise for idealists.