The reasons for such rapid progress (for it is known that the best connoisseurs of football talents are fans, who are very hard to deceive and palm off low-quality goods) lie on the surface. After scoring a goal for the youth national team at the end of 2001, Voronin won a place in the starting lineup of his German club and noticeably improved in skill and self-importance.
Not least thanks to Andrei, his modest Mainz, which until then had been content with modest roles in the second-strongest German division - the Second Bundesliga - twice in a row came close to the elite, where well-known football clubs play - Munich's Bayern, Borussia Dortmund and Borussia Mönchengladbach, Bremen's Werder, Berlin's Hertha, Stuttgart and Hamburg.
Voronin himself is the top scorer not only of his team, but of the entire Second Bundesliga. Moreover, he has the best average score from Germany's very authoritative football publication - Kicker magazine - among players in this division. That is, he is one of the leading players in the league in the current season. Unsurprisingly, combined with the goals illustrated on the equally authoritative European sports channel Eurosport, which the Ukrainian sniper scored against the very strong national teams of Spain and Greece, Voronin's successes at the club have generated interest in him not only from fans or journalists. Tempting offers began to arrive for Andrei from many well-known clubs in Germany, Italy, Spain and Greece, offering our compatriot conditions that Mainz could not boast of. Both material, and - what is most important for a footballer - sporting.
But neither Italy's Parma and Bologna, nor Greece's Olympiacos and Panathinaikos, nor Spain's Betis, nor Germany's Bayern, Stuttgart and Borussia Dortmund managed to convince the top scorer of the Second Bundesliga. Andrei, after consulting with his family, made a paradoxical, at first glance, decision and agreed to put on the jersey of the club Cologne - a respected one, but going through not the best period in its rather glorious history.
"I weighed all the pros and cons for a long time," says Voronin, "and decided that for me personally it would be better if I got a little less financially, but gained more in football. I want to progress and achieve a lot. I believe that for this it is necessary to have constant playing practice. What would I have gained from sitting on the bench at Bayern? In that club, no one guaranteed me a place in the starting lineup, but in Cologne they promised this. Naturally, if I demonstrate the required level of play. Money? It won't run away from me. I think chasing it is wrong. Especially since I can say that the two-year contract with Cologne suits me completely in material terms."
One has heard the opinions of some Ukrainian maximalists who demanded that Voronin move to Bayern or leave for one of the strongest football leagues on the planet - the Italian one. Voronin's explanations that he is a supporter of gradual development rather than sharp leaps forward, which are fraught with equally sharp declines, did not satisfy them. Andriy Shevchenko is a worthy example to follow. He left Dynamo not just anywhere, but for Milan, where he was not afraid to take on the burden of one of the leaders of a famous club. But at the same time, it was forgotten that in the 15-year history of trips of our football players to foreign clubs, there have been as many such successful examples as fingers on one hand. And this is despite the fact that about a thousand of our legionnaires have been abroad. Moreover, Voronin himself had already been burned and understood from his own example that one should not always rush at what glitters.
Andrei's fate is very similar to the fates of many of his peers. As a teenager, he was invited to Germany, promised a brilliant career, and he succumbed to temptation. However, I was not quite accurate. It was the father of the future player of the Ukrainian national team who succumbed to temptation.
"Dad is a football fanatic," Voronin recalls. "He tried to infect me with this game, dreamed that I would become a famous footballer and glorify our surname. He, like my mother, worked at a factory and did not want me, the only child in the family, to have the same unenviable prospect. I was six years old when he took me by the hand and took me to the Chornomorets sports school, after which he carefully followed my career. Then, either in '94 or '95, after a successful performance by our team at an international tournament in Austria, an offer came to move to Germany, to Borussia Mönchengladbach. Dad was dreaming that I would play serious football. He decided that Germany would give a good chance to get ahead in life and insisted on his own. In 1995, the two of us set off to conquer this country. Although I, then a ninth-grader, could hardly imagine how I would live in a foreign country alone, without parents, friends and knowledge of the language. In other words, I did not understand where and why I was going."
Voronin cannot unambiguously assess the period of life spent in Mönchengladbach. And there is no need to do so. On the one hand, it was at Borussia that he almost ended his career, having despaired of proving that he could play good football. On the other hand, it was in this team that he made his first serious steps in big football, got acquainted with a number of very interesting and well-known individuals to specialists. Moreover, it was from Mönchengladbach that Andrei left for Mainz, which then paid a ridiculous price for the acquired footballer - 75 thousand marks. Now Voronin's talent is valued much more worthy. According to German press, the bidding for the rights to the Ukrainian footballer at the beginning of the year started at three million euros.
At Borussia, Andriy quickly became one of the team. He scored a lot and within two years broke into the first team, having gone through the club's youth and amateur teams. His Bundesliga debut came in a match against Bayern, in whose ranks Voronin had to battle the legendary German footballer Lothar Matthäus. The fairy tale became reality.
But not for long. Borussia was not a team where players and coaches could feel relatively at ease. The results of the Gladbach side were not up to scratch, and the club's management demanded improvement, changing coaches like gloves. Each new coach tried to stay longer in his position and was not going to put his career at risk. Therefore, places on the field were entrusted exclusively to experienced and seasoned players. Andriy's injury aggravated the situation - due to a cruciate ligament injury he was out of action for six months, and upon returning he could not adapt to the chaos that reigned at the club.
"I didn't have a relationship with any of the coaches," the footballer recalls. "I asked them to give me a chance, but I never got it. Having lost hope and feeling disappointed, I was ready to go anywhere. When Mainz appeared on the horizon, I agreed immediately. The fact that this team was languishing even in the second Bundesliga did not frighten me but made me glad, because I thought that in such a group I would definitely make the starting lineup."
And then everything developed like in the well-known tale of the ugly duckling. Voronin gradually settled into the new team and, thanks to the trust of coach Jürgen Klopp, whom in Germany they call "Harry Potter", began to move toward recognition. At the same time, when asked how he assessed Borussia Mönchengladbach's chances of success, which had also declared its desire to sign Andriy in the summer of 2003, the Odessa native replied extremely clearly: "The only thing I can do for Mönchengladbach is to come to visit them with my team and score a couple of goals against them. Believe me, that is my only wish regarding this team."
Already in autumn Andriy will have a chance to gratify his pride - Cologne has secured its place in the Bundesliga and in the new season will have the opportunity to meet the best teams in Germany, among which is Gladbach.
Andriy has been in Germany for eight years now. Cologne will be the third city where, after leaving his native Odessa, he will have to set up his life. But if in Mönchengladbach the young Ukrainian was left to his own devices, now it is much easier and simpler for him. First, he has become older and more experienced. Second, the problems with the German language that the 16-year-old boy experienced are long gone. Third, next to him is his wife Ekaterina, whom he met back home in Odessa. Among our footballers who went abroad at school (or almost school) age, there were, of course, those who became so quickly at home among strangers that they were not afraid to marry local women. Voronin is not like that.
For eight years now he has missed Odessa: every year he tries to visit his homeland at least once, to come with friends to the beach, where in childhood he used to go from his native Cheremushki. This is his favorite city. He misses it, which cannot be said about Mainz and Mönchengladbach. Surely it is no coincidence that his wife is also an Odessa native, and the wedding, naturally, was held by the Black Sea itself, which Andriy so lacks in Germany. And he receives his most reliable help precisely from his other half, without whom, as the footballer asserts, he would not have achieved what he can now be proud of.
Probably, there is no need to describe in detail once more how difficult the transition from one society to another is. And if there is an abyss of different languages between them, then it is even more so. At 16, overcoming such obstacles is both easy and difficult at the same time. Considerable help is required from outside, as well as willpower, character, and determination. One can only imagine what the footballer Voronin went through over these eight years, what he paid for his current fame, respect, and honor.
At first, Andriy had to turn to his own uncle for consultations on the most simple and everyday matters, who lived in Frankfurt and ran his own business. The phone, as Voronin recalls, practically never stopped ringing. His parents also tried to support their only son, finding the opportunity to visit him periodically. Particularly difficult times were when the Ukrainian footballer could not find a place in the Borussia lineup. It would seem that many problems had already been solved: the language was learned, there are compatriots nearby who are trying to find their football happiness, the adaptation period is far behind. But the struggle for his own self, for his right to a firm place under the sun continued and took forms that Voronin had never even dreamed of before.
He managed to cope through a combination of factors. His young wife helped, whose move from Ukraine to Germany coincided with his transfer to Mainz. Also helping was Pyotr Neustädter, a native of the USSR who played in the Ukrainian's new team, who had returned to his historical homeland and over nine years of performances in Mainz had become almost its symbol. Having once played in Ukrainian teams of the Soviet championship - Dnipro and Tavriya - Neustädter took Voronin under his wing and became one of his best and closest friends. "Petya realized that they wanted to 'sideline' me. Now they are praising me to the skies, but three years ago they said I couldn't play. He explained to me: 'Don't pay attention to all this talk. You have a goal - go for it, work hard, train. You can do anything.' Who knows, if I had been alone, maybe nothing would have worked out for me." No one was surprised when, after one of Voronin's goals, he celebrated by tearing off his playing shirt and remained in another, on which Neustädter's surname was written.
In Cologne our hero will leave very soon. In Mainz he lived in an apartment provided by the club and is ready to move to a new place, where he is awaited with great impatience. Voronin has exchanged ancient and beautiful but provincial Mainz for a no less beautiful and ancient and at the same time solid city. A city where the Ukrainian forward has already been prepared almost all conditions for a successful game. A city where they seriously count on him. A city in which in two years they should appreciate the talent of the Ukrainian forward.