Chelsea invested in Ukrainian speed

Chelsea’s catastrophic standings have led to one of the most unexpected football transfers of recent years. Trying to strengthen the composition of the London club decided to buy from the Ukrainian “Shakhtar” young striker Mykhailo Mudryk. Mudrik, who was listed at the level of quite ordinary players a little over a year ago, will cost Chelsea €100 million.

On Sunday, London’s Chelsea announced the acquisition of Mykhailo Mudrik from Shakhtar. The club signed a contract with the player for eight and a half years, that is, until 2031. Mudrik, commenting on the transition, told the Londoners’ official website that he was happy to be in a “fantastic league” and join an “extremely attractive project.”

This is one of the most unexpected deals in European football in recent years. The amount gives it loudness. The BBC puts the figure at €70 million, but other sources such as The Athletic and The Guardian claim that Mykhailo Mudryk, although he, like the rest of the Ukrainian team, did not compete at the recent World Cup in Qatar, whose heroes tend to enjoy most in demand as part of the ongoing winter transfer campaign, will cost Chelsea much more. According to them, Londoners, taking into account various bonuses, will pay €100 million or even a little more for him, that is, as much as they usually pay for absolute superstars or young prodigies recognized by experts as exceptionally talented. Thus, Mudryk broke the transfer record for players from the former USSR, which was set in 2006 by another Ukrainian, Andriy Shevchenko, when moving to Chelsea from Milan for €43.8 million.

Meanwhile, strictly speaking, Mikhail Mudrik does not belong to either superstars or child prodigies. He is already 22 years old, and this is still not a junior age, and even last season, few people knew his name. A year and a half ago, Transfermarkt estimated the value of Mudrik extremely modestly, as they estimate the value of quite ordinary football players – about €1 million.

Everything has changed dramatically this season. Most often played as a left winger but occasionally on the right or in the center of attack, Mikhail Mudryk finally made his national team debut last summer, having made eight appearances for it since then, before sparkling in the Champions League group stage. Shakhtar failed to qualify for the playoffs, but Mudryk made them draw attention to themselves. He scored in six matches – with Real Madrid, Leipzig and Celtic – three goals and participated in several goal attacks. In addition, according to the statistics of the Union of European Football Associations, it was Mudrik who turned out to be the fastest player in the group stage (once he accelerated to 36.6 km / h), and also entered the top ten of its best dribblers.

However, even such a performance did not seem to raise him to the cohort of the most sought-after football players in the world. For example, according to Transfermarkt, in early January, the market value of Mikhail Mudrik, whose main contender was still considered another London club, the leader of the English Championship Arsenal, was €40 million.

The sharp jump in the price of Mudrik seems to have been facilitated by the situation in which Chelsea now find themselves. Having changed the owner (Roman Abramovich to a consortium led by Todd Boehley) and coach (Thomas Tuchel to Graham Potter) in 2022, he is suffering a real disaster. Before the 20th round of the national championship, the Londoners were in tenth place in the table and at a considerable distance from the “Champions League zone”.

The club’s management is trying to correct the situation by searching for personnel in the market, which it has already thoroughly shaken up last summer. The transfer of Mudrik, apparently, will allow Chelsea to set a new record for spending on newcomers within one season, in other words, within two transfer windows – summer and winter. The current five-year-old belongs to Barcelona, ​​which invested €380 million in players. But Chelsea got close to it even before the negotiations over Mudrik, spending, according to Transfermarkt, €355 million.

Alexey Dospekhov