Nicknamed Turbo
The team's newcomer, Ukrainian forward Andriy Voronin, is getting good press after Cologne's friendly matches. Journalists and fans, inspired by the pressure of the Odesa football product, have nicknamed the national team striker Turbo, thus classifying him as one of 'their own'.
Voronin, who was given the fairly honorary No. 10 jersey on the eve of the season starting on August 1, is so far justifying the expectations of the management, which made considerable efforts to invite the best player and best scorer of the Second Bundesliga.
Andriy scored two goals in a short match that capped the first stage of preparation for the new season, and then, when the off-season entered its final stretch, he scored one of two goals against the Essen team Rot-Weiss. Thus, Voronin, apparently, made it clear that it is too early for the 24-year-old to rest on past achievements.
Unlike Voronin, another Ukrainian representative in the Bundesliga, the experienced 34-year-old Viktor Skripnik from Werder Bremen, is preparing for the season, so to speak, on a lighter program. The injury that sidelined the Ukrainian back in March does not allow the Dnipropetrovsk football product to be alongside his teammates. Viktor has recently been busy recovering and, on the recommendation of the club's management, went to a resort, choosing the island of Crete.
Dutch demotion
Two Ukrainian footballers also play in Holland. True, compared to the previous season, both have moved to a lower level. Ruslan Valeev - together with Doetinchem, which was relegated. Yevhen Levchenko - moving from Vitesse to Rotterdam's Sparta.
Both Valeev and Levchenko are now considered first-team players at their clubs. True, unlike Levchenko, Valeev has managed to score about a dozen goals against opponents of various levels. But there is nothing surprising here: Valeev is almost a forward in his playing style, while Levchenko is a defensive midfielder.
Minus three legionnaires
The Ukrainian football community now has three fewer foreign players. Following Denys Onyshchenko, who played for Tel Aviv's Hapoel and signed a contract with Kyiv Dynamo, other footballers have returned to their homeland.
Thus, experienced forward Serhiy Skachenko has agreed to cooperate with the management of Zaporizhzhia's Metalurh, and midfielder of Ukraine's youth team Vitaliy Komarnytskyi, whose previous club was Israel's Ironi, signed an agreement with Dnipropetrovsk's Dnipro. It is worth noting that both had other options for continuing their careers. Skachenko had Lutsk's Volyn and Odesa's Chornomorets, while Komarnytskyi had Moscow's Torpedo-Metallurg.
Uncertainty is the worst
There is still no clarity regarding the forward of the Ukrainian national team Serhiy Rebrov. He will play for Turkey's Fenerbahçe for another six months, after which he will have to return to England's Tottenham.
For now, Serhiy is working with the Istanbul side, which has been taken over by the well-known German coach Christoph Daum, and even scoring goals, but there are no guarantees that Fenerbahçe will rely on a player who will have to leave in six months. Therefore, it is not surprising that a group of teams wishing to buy Rebrov has emerged. Tottenham insists on a sum of 2 million pounds.