It was only six months into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine when, on a balmy September evening in eastern Germany, I came across Mykhailo Mudryk shortly after midnight.
This was September 2022 and Mudryk was by then an emerging talent for the Ukrainian champions, Shakhtar Donetsk. He scored and was the team’s major attacking threat in a shock 4-1 victory for Shakhtar in the opening match of their Champions League campaign against German team RB Leipzig.
For Mudryk and his team-mates, the Champions League offered respite from the horrors of home. When Russian bombs landed in Ukraine in February 2022, many of Shakhtar’s foreign players took emergency refuge in a windowless room of a Kyiv hotel, before interventions from multiple national embassies, football federations and UEFA, the European football governing body, hatched an escape plan.
Shakhtar had, at that time, more than a dozen Brazilian players on their books, but many left for safer climes when the Ukrainian season ceased and did not return. Football did resume in Ukraine for the 2022-23 season and Shakhtar, who were first uprooted from their home in Donetsk in 2014 following Russian-backed incursions, were playing home matches in the relatively safer city of Lviv, in Ukraine’s west — though games were still frequently paused by air raid sirens.
Shakhtar’s squad was a shell of its former self, including only one player bought for more than £2million ($2.51m at current rates). This squad was largely comprised of young and inexperienced men. When they played against Real Madrid the following month, their starting team included 10 Ukrainian players, eight who had been produced by the club’s youth system and seven were aged 23 or below.
Mudryk, only 21, all of a sudden became the poster boy of a team whose indomitable spirit and improbable resistance appeared to encapsulate the Ukrainian struggle.
On that evening in Germany, The Athletic was embedded with the Ukrainian side to produce a documentary about their attempts to play on in the midst of war. I briefly spoke to Mudryk and his midfield team-mate and best friend Georgiy Sudakov as they headed out of their hotel in Leipzig in the early hours of the morning. Their heads were spinning after an unlikely victory, the adrenalin coursing through their veins. But, they explained, they also wanted to walk freely in the night, in a place where there were no shelters, no screams, no air raid sirens to force them rapidly underground, to remind themselves of normal life. For half an hour, they did that, before returning to their rooms.
At that point, Mudryk’s star was only just beginning to shine. He was raw, in the extreme, and had it not been for the untimely exodus of Brazilian players, it is unlikely he would have become risen to prominence so rapidly.
This was a player who only debuted for his national team in June 2022 yet by January 2023, following a handful of impressive performances in the Champions League, including against Real Madrid, Mudryk became the most expensive Ukrainian footballer in history. He signed for Premier League side Chelsea, who committed an initial £62m, plus £26.5m in potential additional payments dependent on his and Chelsea’s success.
This week’s news that Mudryk has tested positive for the banned substance meldonium is a dagger to the heart of Ukrainian football and leaves the player in a fight to salvage his career. The extent of the damage will hinge on the result of Mudryk’s ‘B’ sample, which is yet to be revealed, as the adverse finding relates to his ‘A’ sample, but he has been provisionally suspended by the English Football Association.
Ukraine’s Euro 2024 campaign turned into an emotional symbol of national pride (Andrzej Iwanczuk / NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Chelsea’s commitment to acquiring the player was significant, tying him to a seven-and-a-half-year contract, with the option of another year. Even in the middle of the invasion, Shakhtar managed to attract a bidding war, such was the interest. He had previously been pursued by Germany’s Bayer Leverkusen, as well as Newcastle United, Brentford and Everton in the Premier League, but it came down to a fight between Arsenal and Chelsea.
At the time, Shakhtar’s director of football Dario Srna told The Athletic: “If somebody wants to buy Mudryk, they must pay huge, huge, huge money. Otherwise the president of the club (Rinat Akhmetov) will not sell him. All the clubs must respect the president, respect Shakhtar and in the end they must respect Mykhaylo Mudryk, who is one of the best players I saw. The price is so big.”
Srna said he rated Mudryk as being only behind Kylian Mbappe and Vinicius Junior in his wide forward position and insisted big money would be required, considering Manchester United signed Antony from Ajax in a £86m deal and Jadon Sancho from Borussia Dortmund £73m, while Manchester City bought Jack Grealish for £100m.
Shakhtar, conscious of the power of sport in steering the narrative around the war, also announced upon completion of the transfer that their own owner, Rinat Akhmetov, would donate $25m to the war effort, to support in particular the defence of Mariupol and the families of those who have lost loved ones. The agreement with Chelsea also included a clause that said Shakhtar would play a future friendly against Chelsea in Donetsk, when and if that area of Ukraine is no longer occupied by Russian forces.
“It is written into the contract,” Sergei Palkin, the Shakhtar chief executive, told The Athletic in January 2023. “But actually, we did not even need to read it in the contract because Behdad Eghbali (the Chelsea co-owner) spoke with our president. Behdad supports Ukraine a lot because he is American and it is an English club, so this is a positive triangle. When you say England and Ukraine, it is important for our war support.
“It was Behdad who proposed (the friendly), because he said he wanted to help Ukraine, to help Ukrainian refugees and to support Ukrainian people. This match (in Donetsk) would be like a miracle (having not played in their home city since 2014). We would have this match every weekend if we could.”
When Mudryk was unveiled at Stamford Bridge, he did so wrapped in a flag of Ukraine. The player was born and raised in the city of Krasnohrad, close to Kharkiv, one of the most brutally hit areas of the country. “Since the the beginning of the full-scale war, my city has been bombarded with missiles day and night,” Mudryk said, speaking in a powerful video of 13 Ukrainian players talking about the impact of the war on their hometowns, released by the Ukrainian Football Association before the European Championship in the summer of 2024.
Mudryk (left) competes with Arsenal’s Martin Odegaard last month (Ryan Pierse / Getty Images)
He is a more reserved figure than his Ukrainian compatriot Oleksandr Zinchenko, who has been at the forefront of media initiatives to promote solidarity with Ukraine. He appears to be a devoutly religious figure, a follower of the orthodox Christian faith, who carries religious icons with him to games. On his chest, he has a tattoo that reads: “Dear god — if today I lose my hope, please remind me that your plans are better than my dreams”.
For his national team, the speaking has more often been done on the field, most notably when he scored the winner in a victory over Iceland to take his country to Euro 2024. Ukraine exited that tournament at the group stage and Mudryk did not score, although his nation went out only on goal difference with all four teams in Group E tied on four points after three games.
For club and country, he is yet to fulfil his potential. He has scored only five goals and recorded four assists in 53 Premier League appearances for Chelsea. This week’s sample revelation cast doubt on his ability to play at all, meldonium being a drug that previously saw the tennis star Maria Sharapova barred from competing.
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The adverse test was reported during a routine urine test, according to a Chelsea statement. The club added that Mudryk “has confirmed categorically that he has never knowingly used any banned substances”.
Writing on Instagram, Mudryk said the result “has come as a complete shock as I have never knowingly used any banned substances or broken any rules”.
He added: “I am working closely with my team to investigate how this could have happened.
“I know that I have not done anything wrong and remain hopeful that I will be back on the pitch soon. I cannot say any more now due to the confidentiality of the process, but I will as soon as I can.”
The English Football Association’s (FA) anti-doping regulations state that any breaches will be dealt with as strict liability violations. For example, a player will be found guilty of a violation if a prohibited substance is found in that player’s body. It is not necessary to demonstrate intent. A player’s alleged lack of intent or knowledge is not a valid defence to a charge.
A violation of the FA’s anti-doping regulations carries a maximum penalty of a four-year suspension, although mitigating factors can reduce that from anywhere from two years to just a month. The B sample will be key.
Shakhtar’s Georgiy Sudakov voiced support for his friend Mudryk (Christof Koepsel / Getty Images)
As Mudryk’s career hangs in the balance, the Ukrainian football establishment appears to be rallying behind him. Multiple sources in Ukraine, who remain anonymous because they did not have permission to speak, have indicated to The Athletic that the player suspects he may have been sabotaged while he was away with his country’s national team this season — a claim we have seen no evidence to support — but which is being taken seriously in his own country.
On Instagram, the Shakhtar midfielder Sudakov posted a message of support, urging his friend to “stay strong”.
The Shakhtar CEO Palkin, meanwhile, wrote that Mudryk is a “high-profile professional athlete”, adding that he has complete trust that the player “did not use any banned substance”.
Palkin said: “I am confident that he will prove his innocence.” Time will tell whether their faith is warranted.
(Top photo: Etsuo Hara/Getty Images; design: Dan Goldfarb)
