10 tough questions on Mudrik at Chelsea and one optimistic one! – answer

It’s not easy to walk on sinful earth, realizing that you are worth 100 million euros. Even if you are arrogant, you will be lifted above the ground and you will lose the ground under your feet. Especially if you are suspicious – you will hunch under the weight of responsibility.

Mikhail Mudrik is a really gifted guy, but the challenges that he faces are difficult even for experienced people, and he should still watch anime and play computer games.

So what awaits Mudrik in England and what will he face now in Chelsea?

First. Mudrik will have to overcome the difference in class and intensity between the leagues

It is believed that when moving to the top league, the most difficult thing is to quickly adapt to the new level and intensity of the tournament. That is why from weaker leagues they take guys who are head and shoulders above the environment – they have a reserve of class, they can progress and overcome such a test faster. You can compare it with the pressure on a Formula 1 racer or an aviation pilot – everything that you did before, now you have to do it faster and more clearly. Each ball reception leaves even less time for reflection. Each action will be punished in case of an error.

And most importantly, the Western European leagues set completely different requirements for the calendar rhythm of the players. There will be no off-season for 3 months, there will be no pauses and rescheduled matches, you will have to be constantly ready to compete for a place in the base every week and live up to the status of the 100 millionth newcomer.

Second. Mudrik will feel the pressure of high expectations

They always say – it’s bad to come to rent, it’s good – for a lot of money. Say, the club itself will be interested in “beating” them and will “pull” the newcomer. But in fact, in the sport of the highest achievements, a huge transfer amount is also a huge responsibility. This is how Juan Felix, a gifted player, withered in Atletico, but under pressure he could not psychologically withstand the role of leader, and they didn’t allocate time for adaptation to the multi-million newcomer – they demanded everything now.

Third. Mudrik has no time to adapt. Not at all

Firstly, it comes in winter, when there is a short intermission in all of Western Europe, and in England it is not, consider it at all. Secondly, Chelsea is in the midst of the season on all fronts – and the team is not successful. She needs help here and now. And Mudrik will get his first legionary experience without training camps and test matches – right off the bat, with injuries to Pulisic and Sterling, if you please, work out multimillion-dollar investments.

Fourth. Mudrik will have to pump his weaknesses very quickly

And there are actually a lot of them. Misha is very dependent on space, he likes to throw his opponent and absorb meter by meter on the snatch. Do they give such freedom of action in the Premier League? Well, of course not. If Mudrik is not ready for “Plan B”, he may be bitterly disappointed. Indeed, even in the UPL, teams with simplified football due to tight guardianship sometimes “ate” Mikhail – what will happen in the league of the highest sports level.

In addition, in football of the highest achievements it is necessary to work out very seriously. If you are a flank player, then on the entire length of the flank. In this regard, it will be very difficult for Mudrik, because at Shakhtar the wingers (especially the Brazilians) are not used to working on the touchline the way the players of the top teams in the world work out. But the same World Cup showed that even great teams are not able to tolerate the abundance of pedestrians. Mikhail will have to add significantly

Misha also has questions about the implementation, the left leg, especially the heading. All this will have to be pumped to match the level of the environment and competition.

Fifth. Chelsea actually have a very strong squad

Where to shove Mudrik – a puzzle for Potter Right now is a good time for Misha – Sterling and Pulisic are injured. But when they return, the coaching staff will have to rack their brains.

See. The left winger (we understand that this is the main and almost uncontested position for Mudrik) can be played by Raheem Sterling (28 years old, transfer fee – 70 million euros), Christian Plisic (24, 38), if necessary – Juan Felix ( 23, 50) and Mason Mount (24, 75). Kai Havertz (23, 70) and Hakim Ziyech (29, 20) can cover the flank – both are more left-footed, and therefore tend to play the inverted variant on the right.

Star names dazzle the eye. Admit it, how would you see a newcomer from the UPL in this company?

Sixth. Graham Potter has a tactic at his disposal in which pronounced wingers are not needed

With 4-2-3-1 or 4-1-4-1 schemes, there are no questions – wingers are needed, wingers are important. But what if Potter wants to play 4-3-2-1 or 3-4-2-1? And he played exactly half of the 20 matches in Chelsea with three defenders. What then? Then Felix, Mount and Havertz are the most preferred options under the striker. Pure extreme havas drop out. And, oddly enough, in view of the injuries of Pulisic and Sterling, Potter is more likely to switch to an insider scheme than to put Mudrik alone on the left, and on the right he will be forced to throw someone more tested on the flank with a 3-4-2-1 formation.

Seventh. Poor results force Chelsea to rotate

In general, the team has a clearly distinguished combat base of 11-14 main players. But several of them (including goalkeeper Mendy, defenders Azpilicueta, Fofan and Chilwell, defensive midfielder Kante and wingers Sterling and Pulisic) are injured. Others have not yet taken place as the main players, so they “float” under the pressure of the result.

For Mudrik, on the one hand, this is a window of opportunity, but on the other hand, it also risks falling into the cycle of forced rotation. A beginner needs to show himself quickly, quickly break through his place at the base and adapt just as quickly.

And how will you do it if the coach shuffles the squad due to injuries and losses? There are difficulties for everyone here, and they can only be solved by stabilization. We hope that the long-awaited first victory after several misfires will calm and smooth the foundation.

Eighth. Mudrik himself is a player of one position. Or not?

At the same time, Misha played most of the matches in Shakhtar and the national teams exactly in the place of the left midfielder – winger. We can somehow imagine what he can do on the right flank, but playing under a striker or a pure forward is a completely untested option. Meanwhile, competition and the peculiarities of a three-centre-back formation without wingers can force coaches to try Mudrik in unusual places. And even we, Ukrainians, who have been following the development of Mikhail for several years now, cannot confidently say that he will cope.

Ninth. Mudrik has the most complicated personal calendar

The guy is eager to succeed everywhere – both in the national team and in the youth team, which will soon play at the final tournament of the U-21 European Championship. Will it succeed everywhere? That is the question. There are a lot of collections in Chelsea, and you need to be constantly at hand with the coaches so as not to fall out of the cage. After all, they will wait for Rakhimka or Kante – they are already big stars. And even Hazard, Lukaku, Werner got off the train if at least somewhere they did not match the pace of the club.

Tenth. Chelsea is still an almshouse and an inconvenient club for Ukrainians

They spent about half a billion euros on player transfers, and they are in tenth place in the championship. They suddenly fired Tuchel, spent a lot of money on Potter’s coaching transfer – and now the place under him is also starting to stagger.

If the club’s management and leadership are not patient, this season could turn into a nightmare for the Blues. What will definitely beat off on an expensive and young legionnaire, signed at the height of the season without fees and views.

And it’s not just now. Andrey Shevchenko himself, with the good will of Abramovich, failed here at the mature stage of his career. Several possible transfers of our players to Chelsea simply did not take place. This is a foreign club in which the young guy Misha Mudrik will have to work not only with his muscles, but also with his brains – to be a diplomat, an artist, a charmer, a good boy, a diligent student. To survive in a foreign environment, the Ukrainian will have to quickly become his own and make everyone forget about the numbers that are written in his contract and on the transfer market. Like Zinchenko in Man City, who established human relations as quickly as possible and earned friendship with the stars, even with those who were essentially his competitors.

And the optimistic answer we promised!

Ruslan Rotan once said in an interview, he said an interesting phrase: “The current generation is much more professional than ours.” And I want to believe the head coach of the youth team of Ukraine.

Those who know Mudrik assure him that he is a professional to the marrow of his bones. Mikhail wanted to become a football star since childhood. He always monitored his diet, daily routine, training tasks. He was the last to leave after training, tirelessly practicing punches and feints. Seeing somewhere an outlandish reception of the ball or a pass with a step, Mudrik minted the technique hundreds of times until he mastered his art perfectly. It’s very Mudrikovsky – to get stuck on YouTube with watching cuts of the best moments of Neymar, Cristiano, Messi, Kvarezma, Ziyech, Havertz. All this he learns and adopts.

Mudrik studies very well. Not only in football – the guy learned English while still playing in Ukraine, he learned how all the main football terms sound in several languages. His desk books are biographies of stars. He has read all about the working methods in Barcelona, ​​Bayern, Chelsea, Man City. He knows how to recover from Cristiano Ronaldo games and what Messi does in the gym. Mudrik is obsessed with all these lotions – polars, teips, lotions for muscles. He regularly reads his statistics and gets very upset if someone in Europe gives out indicators for the speed or efficiency of strokes that are not available to him.

So if Mudrik is not ready for such a challenge, then we don’t know who is more ready in the UPL. This guy is a bundle of energy and ambition. His character is like that of Blokhin multiplied by Shevchenko. Self-conceit (in every sense) at the same level. He has already become the most expensive football player in the history of Ukraine, but he is looking somewhere in the direction of the Golden Ball. Let him dare, and may fate help him. Hard workers deserve success, and Mudrik is ready to prove that he is not just a lucky accident, but a logical result of a lot of work.

Yaroslav Smelyansky