Although the unsuccessful performances of the Ukrainian national team clearly did not speak in favor of our compatriot, he could be credited with quite significant achievements. Among them are goals on Milan's path to the Champions League final, the decisive penalty in the main match, and the winning goal against Porto in the UEFA Super Cup match. Andriy also started the new season excellently, scoring goals in almost every match.
But gradually hopes began to fade. First, after information leaked from Italy that Juventus midfielder Pavel Nedved would be named the best. Then results began to be summed up one after another according to alternative versions. Shevchenko was not in leading roles in them. It became clear that he could not count on the role of winner. The poll of national team coaches from around the world, which FIFA has conducted since 1991, finished him off. The coaches named Frenchman Zidane as the best, and gave Shevchenko only 10th place.
This week, France Football announced the results of its poll: as the Italians had predicted, the best footballer of Europe in 2003 was Czech player Pavel Nedved of Juventus. Second place went to Frenchman Thierry Henry of Arsenal, third to Italian Paolo Maldini of Milan. Fourth was Andriy Shevchenko, who over the past five years has three times (!) been included in the top five in this highly prestigious poll. And before that, apart from victories in the France Football poll by Oleg Blokhin (1975) and Igor Belanov (1986), only two Ukrainians had made it into the top five: the same Blokhin was fifth in 1981, and the current head coach of Kyiv's Dynamo, Alexei Mykhailychenko, finished fourth in 1988.