Former Shakhtar star almost certainly set to make debut in cauldron on Saturday — at Anfield
“He was always so concentrated on football,” says Ihor Litovka, who was Desna’s goalkeeper. “When we had a day off, he’d be training; when we had one training session, he’d be doing two. He’d go out on to the pitch alone, taking balls with him, shooting and dribbling. Then he’d go and ask the coach to show him how he played in the last game, reviewing the statistics. That was very important to him.
Mykhaylo Mudryk of Shakhtar Donetsk after scoring his side's opener during the Champions League match at Celtic Park last October. File photograph: Getty Images A year after Mudryk returned to Shakhtar, Desna were a casualty of Russia’s aggression. Their stadium was all but destroyed; Litovka, who is trying to rebuild his career in Croatia, is among the former team-mates for whom multimillion-pound transfers were never on the table. Mudryk had the attributes for a different path. “His pace was unreal,” Litovka says. “Really, really high speed and very, very good dribbling that reminded me of Ronaldinho.
Chelsea will hope for more of that, along with the end product that enabled Mudryk score twice against Celtic and once against RB Leipzig in this season’s group stage. He also shone in both encounters with Real Madrid, repeating the verve that saw him applauded from the Bernabéu pitch the previous season. That was 10 weeks after the Monaco game and Mudryk had left little doubt that the Champions League was his theatre.
While Shakhtar coaches had been slow to appreciate him, those around Mudryk felt for some time that the same applied externally. Premier League clubs had long been made aware of him but Brentford were the only side from England to bite firmly before his eruption. They were happy to make him their record signing by some distance last summer but Shakhtar, who sought a fee north of £30m even six months ago, would not yield.
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