When the Chernobyl nuclear disaster happened in April 1986, I was nine years old. I’d just had a trial with Dynamo Kyiv, and it had gone well, but everything changed. In the first few days following the disaster, we carried on with our normal lives because they thought the situation was under control. Eventually, though, we were evacuated, because of the risk of being so close to ground zero. My father was in the military and had access to some of the information – they decided to take us to the coast, to the Sea of Azov. There, we stayed in camps for three months until we were able to return. During that time, I lost contact with the people at Dynamo. I honestly felt I’d never play for them again.
In the years before that, I have fond memories of playing in the Kyiv streets with my friends. All the images I keep in my memory are connected to football – I’d wake up and go to bed thinking about it, dreaming of making it as a player. The thought I could achieve it motivated me – I had curiosity and a desire to improve from a very young age.
I regularly competed in inter-school tournaments – they’d call me up to play, and we’d travel by bus to different neighbourhoods. That’s when I started to stand out among the kids of my age group. I didn’t always win, but that wasn’t the most important thing. Even back then, people could sense the leadership I had on the pitch – I already had a strong mentality.
A guy called Oleksandr Shpakov worked for Dynamo Kyiv and used to attend those kinds of matches because he was a scout for the club, looking for young talents who could make it to the top. I remember he came up to me, introduced himself and told me to get ready for a trial.
After that trial came Chernobyl and my evacuation. In late September or early October, though, after returning to Kyiv, one of Dynamo’s coaches came to visit me. He was surprised I hadn’t rejoined the club’s setup – fortunately, I resumed training.
Later, I travelled abroad with Dynamo. We played in two different tournaments: one in Aberdeen and another in Wales, at the Ian Rush Cup. I was 13, we won and I was named the best player. It was special because Rush himself gave me a pair of Nike boots. Even though the boots were too small for me, I treasured them for years because everyone knew him and he was a Liverpool legend – I tried playing with them once, until my big toes poked through the toe area! Soon, Valeriy Lobanovskyi came into my life. He was the most influential coach in Ukraine’s history – we all knew about him because he built winning teams at Dynamo Kyiv across several generations: in 1974, in 1986, and when he returned again in 1997. By the latter, I was already in the first team. If he came back, it was because he believed he could win again with that team. He believed in us.
The first time I spoke to Lobanovskyi face to face was in the office he had at the stadium. He motivated me even more than I already was, as I realised that someone with a competitive spirit had come to the club, someone who was going to push us all forward. He told me, “You’re very young, you have quality and talent, but you need to be disciplined, completely change your character and be more professional.” He drew the path for me to start my true professional career. He transformed us all from talented footballers into warriors with the desire to create a great team.
Some of the training sessions were a nightmare, though! Occasionally we even had three sessions in a day, when we were used to doing a maximum of two. The physical intensity was huge. I remember some team-mates ended certain drills by throwing up, due to extreme fatigue. Many of the veterans promised to be ready for the matches, but in exchange they asked for a truce. To train less hard. They just couldn’t take it any more.
But Lobanovskyi never gave in, and his way of expressing himself was funny. “Look, this is a clock, everything has to be perfect for it to give the correct time,” he’d say. “Imagine I take out a piece? It won’t work. This is the same. Either you respect the rules I set, or you leave.” Those were his principles.
In the space of four or five months we already felt different, capable of doing anything. Everything improved: the collective, the individual performances, the strategy, the management of the dressing room, the physical preparation. He always took care of me. He kept repeating to me that talent without the right mindset wouldn’t be enough. “If you want to go far, then you have to be professional,” he constantly warned me. I had to dedicate myself 100 per cent and sacrifice certain things in my life. That education was essential. He was like a father in every sense of the word. He also instilled in us the importance of understanding his ideas during matches, and knowing why we did each thing. I love his story, it’s exceptional. After winning everything, including two European Cup Winners’ Cups, he had come back to Dynamo Kyiv to do it all again.
That first season in 1997-98 was very special for the whole team, but also for me personally, because I had a magical night at the Camp Nou where I scored a hat-trick against Barcelona. We won 4-0 and that was when we began to believe in ourselves, and the possibilities of doing something big in the Champions League. It was unforgettable. Without a doubt, one of my best moments at Dynamo. How many teams score four goals against Barça in their own ground? Not many. We played a great match. It was during those years I formed a really good attacking partnership with Serhiy Rebrov. I’d known him since I was 15 – we’d already shared a dressing room in the youth teams of Ukraine. We had a good relationship. I liked how he thought, played and read the game. He became a good friend, and it was easy to play alongside him. We attacked, but we also had to defend a lot.
Lobanovskyi brought us all together. One season later, we came really close to winning the Champions League. We eliminated Real Madrid, the great giant of Europe, but we couldn’t get past Bayern Munich in the semi-finals. We drew 3-3 at home, but ended up losing 1-0 in Munich. We lacked experience. If we’d had that, we would have made it to the final. We also lacked a bit of luck.
We had the same spirit in the national team. Ukraine means everything to me.
It was both an enormous motivation and a great honour to wear my nation’s shirt. I started playing for the youth teams when I was 15 – my first match came shortly after Ukraine gained independence, in Lviv, against a Dutch junior team that had Clarence Seedorf in its line-up.
The stadium was packed with 30,000 people, who were proud and emotional to finally have their own national team. We drew 2-2. It was one of the happiest moments of my career.
I made my debut for the senior team in 1995 and played in many important matches, including against Russia in the last game of our qualifying group for Euro 2000. It was a controversial fixture because relations between Ukraine and Russia were tense – in fact, instead of sleeping at a hotel in Moscow, we had to stay at the embassy for security reasons.
A major security operation had been put in place due to the special circumstances surrounding the match.
On our way to the stadium, fans threw stones at our bus, but luckily it didn’t go any further. We were totally focused on getting a good result, because if we lost our Euros hopes were over. I scored an 88th-minute equaliser – it was a long-range effort, with no real threat at first glance, but it just had to be on target as then anything could happen. Someone could deflect it, or the goalkeeper could make a mistake, which is exactly what happened. It was a moment of immense national pride.
Earlier that year, 1999, I had joined Milan. The first contact came through Rezo Chokhonelidze, a Georgian scout that the club used in Eastern Europe. He came to watch me play some games, started following me with more interest alongside another of his colleagues, and spoke with Lobanovskyi, with whom he had a good relationship.
Milan’s CEO Ariedo Braida travelled to Kyiv to see me too, and we spoke after a match. He was a polite, well-dressed man, and Rezo acted as a translator. Ariedo gave me a Milan shirt with my name on it and said, “The only way to win the Ballon d’Or is by playing for us.”
He didn’t need to say much more to convince me – it was an honour for me, and I told him I dreamed of achieving both things.
I talked with Lobanovskyi – I told him I felt ready, and he said it was the right time for me to continue growing. He warned me that I’d have to keep working to earn my place at a club like Milan. Not long after that, he combined his role as coach of Dynamo with that of Ukraine’s national team boss, so we never lost contact. Every time I came back to play for the national team, I’d go straight to his office and we’d talk for three or four hours – he’d ask about the training methodology in Italy, about the players and the tactics there.
I arrived at the best club in the world at that time, also with the best people. From the beginning, I felt the warmth and affection of everyone at Milan.
I didn’t speak Italian, but I took lessons, and in the dressing room they always gave me a hand. They invited me out to eat, made jokes and made me feel like one of them.
Alessandro Costacurta was 10 years older than me – he was like a brother. I shared a room with Demetrio Albertini and Massimo Ambrosini on trips, and they helped me too. Alberto Zaccheroni was my first coach, he was wonderful. The whole club, and also the supporters, wanted me to succeed.
I scored on my Serie A debut at Lecce, after a beautiful combination between George Weah, Oliver Bierhoff and myself, as we drew 2-2. Milan were champions when I arrived, so I joined a club that had recently been really successful, but it was also a time of transition. Weah, Bierhoff, Zvonimir Boban and Leonardo had given everything but were reaching the end of their time at the club. Over the next two or three seasons, the team changed, with Seedorf, Filippo Inzaghi, Alessandro Nesta, Rivaldo and Andrea Pirlo coming in, while Gennaro Gattuso stepped up from relegated Salernitana. It was a necessary metamorphosis for Milan to become the main reference point in Italian football again, because there were six big Serie A teams going into the 1999-2000 campaign.
Inter had Javier Zanetti, Christian Vieri, Ivan Zamorano and Ronaldo. Lazio had Pavel Nedved, Alen Boksic, Sinisa Mihajlovic, Marcelo Salas and Roberto Mancini. Juventus had Alessandro Del Piero and Zinedine Zidane. Parma had Gianluigi Buffon, Fabio Cannavaro and Hernan Crespo. Fiorentina had Rui Costa and Gabriel Batistuta. Looking at all of those squads, any could win the title. It was the golden age of calcio. It was beautiful.
Then Carlo Ancelotti arrived in 2001 – he was an exemplary coach. We’re still friends – we often call each other, and not long ago I visited him in Madrid. As we grew, that Milan team wasn’t just a fantastic side – above all else, it was a fantastic group of people guided by a master like him.
In 2003, Milan won the Champions League. The toughest tie was the semifinal against Inter. The whole city fell into silence that week, as the nerves and anticipation increased day by day –
Ancelotti said he’d never seen so much tension in the air. We drew 0-0 in the first leg and 1-1 in the return leg, when I scored to send us through to the final thanks to the away goals rule.
Despite it finishing 0-0, there were so many chances in the final against Juve at Old Trafford. It was anything but dull.
Both goalkeepers, Dida and Buffon (by then of Juve), were decisive. When we reached the penalty shootout, Ancelotti asked me to take the first one. I told him no, as I wanted the responsibility of taking the last one. I was confident I’d score. As I ran up to the ball, images from my childhood flashed through my mind – all those moments dreaming of winning that competition. That night, we rewrote history. I scored the winning penalty, and it was perfect.
Afterwards, I spoke to the Milan vice president, Adriano Galliani, and he gave me permission to take the Champions League trophy to Kyiv, to pay tribute to Lobanovskyi who’d died a year earlier. It was the very first thing I did – I flew on a private jet and took the trophy to visit Lobanovskyi’s monument.
He meant a lot in my career, he helped me to take my first steps, and we’d come really close to winning the trophy at Dynamo. He deserved it. He would have loved to win it himself – that I did it with Milan was partly thanks to him.
A year later, I also won the Ballon d’Or. I’d been scoring many goals for several seasons, and I knew that playing for a big club like Milan put me in contention for it. Beating Turkey during qualification for the World Cup was also key. We won 3-0 away, I scored two, and I had the feeling that I moved closer to the Ballon d’Or that day. I was competing with top players such as Deco and Ronaldinho, but it was reward for three or four years performing at the highest level. A month after that victory in Turkey, my wife went with me to the Ballon d’Or gala in Paris, along with Galliani and Leonardo as Milan’s representatives. It was so special, because I’d dreamed of that moment since I was a kid. My idols, Oleh Blokhin and Ihor Belanov, had also won it, and I became the third Ukrainian footballer to receive the Ballon d’Or. The satisfaction was gigantic.
Soon after, I was also awarded the title of Hero of Ukraine. It meant everything to me for my country to recognise my achievements. Playing for Milan, I knew there were millions of Ukrainians who took great pride in having a compatriot representing them.
In 2005, though, we reached another Champions League final, where we faced Liverpool in Istanbul. We were 3-0 up at half-time, then followed six minutes of nightmare. In that period, we gave up our three-goal advantage, but we must also give credit to Liverpool for the blind faith they had in their comeback. Their supporters never stopped cheering them on from the stands.
People may think that we relaxed at 3-0, but that’s not true at all. We were concentrated and didn’t underestimate Liverpool – at half-time, we’d talked about maintaining focus, because there was still a second half to play. The final was strange. If we could overlook those six minutes, we played a great match. We dominated, created chances and I had a double chance in extra time that Jerzy Dudek inexplicably saved. Football is beautiful for that reason. Never take anything for granted.
In the penalty shootout, I tried to do something similar to Old Trafford two years earlier. Yes, I was nervous, and I noticed Dudek making some strange movements in goal. My shot ended up being too close to the centre of the goal, and he saved it with his left hand. Understanding that you don’t always win is another valuable lesson in life. Every great athlete has missed at some point. Michael Jordan used to explain that before reaching the top, he missed thousands of free throws. You have to accept defeat as part of the journey.
The following season, we lost in the Champions League semi-finals against Barcelona. We lost the first leg 1-0 at San Siro, but really competed in the return at the Camp Nou. The referee unjustly ruled out a goal I scored that would have forced extra time – back then there was no VAR, but I never fouled Carles Puyol. That Barça team under Frank Rijkaard were amazing, so I’m not complaining. In life, you win and you lose.
That summer, Chelsea were interested in signing me, and I made the difficult decision to leave San Siro and try new things. My greatest football years were in Italy – I arrived at 22 and left at 29. But I also wanted a different experience, to live in a different country.
The transfer went through just before the 2006 World Cup in Germany. Helping Ukraine to qualify for the first time was an emotional achievement, but I went into it far from my very best, dealing with injuries. I only started training two days before our opening game against Spain, after being out for more than a month.
I took physiotherapists along with me to speed up my recovery, to try to be ready in time, and our coach Oleh Blokhin said he wanted to play me right away, so that I could gain match rhythm.
We lost 4-0 to Spain, but beat Saudi Arabia and Tunisia. I scored in both wins and we made it to the last 16, then beat Switzerland on penalties, before being knocked out by champions Italy in the quarter-finals. It was a great journey. I still remember how many Ukrainians came to support us in Germany, and how grateful they were for everything we achieved that summer.
Before I knew it – having accumulated fatigue, without time to recover – I was starting my new life at Chelsea. I didn’t have any time to adapt, and there were high expectations around me. We went to do pre-season in the USA, everything happened very quickly, and the first few weeks were tough.
We lost the Community Shield against Liverpool, but personally I had a good debut – after a pass from Frank Lampard, I’d equalised with a chest control and a nice finish with the inside of my foot. There was a strong hunger to win at Chelsea – guys like Lampard, Petr Cech, John Terry and Arjen Robben were at
the peak of their careers, combined with experienced players like Claude Makelele, Michael Ballack and myself. We were a strong team. We started the campaign a bit inconsistently, but I liked that the dressing room was very competitive, the atmosphere was good and we motivated each other to succeed.
Working for Jose Mourinho was a great experience – I have a lot of respect for him because he always made the best decisions for the team. He was a master at motivating each player in a different way and knew how to strike the right chord with every single one of us – he used his intelligence to convince us individually and as a group. We were his soldiers. I was fortunate throughout my career that every coach I had shared the same trait: their winning mentality. My most special moment at Chelsea was winning the 2007 FA Cup Final at the new Wembley, because of how much it means to the English. We came close to winning the Premier League title in both of my seasons, but Manchester United came out on top by a narrow margin. I was performing at a high level some of the time, especially during my first campaign from January to April, before I got injured. The problem was I had too many physical problems that gradually wore me down. I had hernia surgery, the recovery was slow, and I went through several ups and downs that stopped me from playing consistently for half a year. In my second season, I started off well, scoring goals, had a great match against Aston Villa on Boxing Day, then I got injured again. It was tough to end with the defeat by Manchester United in the Champions League final in Moscow.
I went back to Milan on loan, and it was fantastic to share a dressing room with Ronaldinho and David Beckham. We spent a lot of time together, and it was fun. Even though they were high-profile figures, they were great team-mates on a daily basis – amenable, professional. They were winners, it was in their DNA. Ronaldinho was one of the most gifted players in football history. He was magic personified, full of charisma.
It was a difficult time for me, though, because injuries again wore me down. I was more than aware that I was no longer the player I’d been a few years earlier. I couldn’t compete at the same level, because my body wouldn’t let me reach my usual standard.
I played through the pain barrier, and that’s when I decided it was best for me to return to Dynamo Kyiv – primarily so I could experience Euro 2012 at home, with Ukraine and Poland co-hosting the finals. I wanted to prepare properly, as I hadn’t played at the Euros before, and I wanted to enjoy it to the fullest ahead of retirement. I got myself back in shape, played for Dynamo and featured in the Champions League again.
When the tournament arrived, I was in the final weeks of my career, but I still felt I had something to offer. I wanted to sign off in the best possible way, and the Euros gave me the perfect stage: to say goodbye to football at home. I was carrying some pain in my back, but in our opening match against Sweden I played one of my finest matches in five years, scoring twice, as we came from behind after Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s goal. It was madness. My whole family and so many friends were in the stands. It was special. Later, I became assistant coach of the national team for Euro 2016. We lost to Germany, Poland and Northern Ireland without scoring a goal and the dressing room was completely down, bereft of confidence, but I agreed to take over as manager because I saw huge potential. I surrounded myself with some highly capable staff – Mauro Tassotti, Andrea Maldera and Raul Riancho – and over two years we evaluated more than 100 players, investing countless time and effort to rebuild the squad, as we knew there was talent in Ukraine.
We didn’t have much time to work with the players and we didn’t qualify for the 2018 World Cup, but we were shaping the idea we believed in. We convinced everyone of the importance of playing a certain way – controlling matches and dictating play – and we worked hard on the group’s mentality. Maybe we couldn’t dominate matches against the top-tier nations, but we knew we could control games against 75 per cent of opponents. At Euro 2020, we reached the quarter-finals, losing to England.
Since the start of last year, I’ve had a different role, but one that’s equally important, as president of the Ukrainian Football Association. Everything starts with building a strong team around you. We’ve been living through the toughest moment in Ukraine’s history, and during these three years of full-scale war, we have shown the world that football still exists in our country.
I’ve felt a strong responsibility to help people and support my country in every way I can – that’s what I’ve been totally committed to, and what I’ve done on a daily basis. I’ve regularly attended charity events, as the most well-known Ukrainian footballer. Other sportspeople have helped, too, and we’re in constant contact – Oleksandr Usyk, Elina Svitolina, Wladimir Klitschko, Sergiy Stakhovsky. We’re all connected. Whenever there’s anything linked to sport or humanitarian causes, our president, Volodymyr Zelensky, knows he can always count on my advice.
We all want peace, but also justice for Ukraine. We must defend our integrity as a country. We’ve fought for our lives. Although I travel for conferences and often to London, where my entire family has been for 19 years, I spend most of my time in Kyiv, where I grew up.
Every day we’ve heard the sirens, the threat of missiles and drones. No one has been safe – only when we’ve been in the shelter.
Football, though, has still given people hope. That’s the most powerful message we want to share with the world. We’ve continued to take part and succeed in competitions, at youth level, in women’s football and in futsal, too. We’ve been present and we’ve competed. Everything has been more difficult for us and we’ve faced unexpected challenges every day. As Ukrainians, though, we’ve carried on moving forward.
