Never again – hear, never! Don’t call him a dummy! Mudrik is now admired by all of Europe

“There is a new potential star. If you look at what Mikhail Mudryk did today, you will understand why Shakhtar Donetsk turned down a €30/35 million offer last week. The quality of the Champions League level, pace, goal, assists – he is considered a top talent, so Shakhtar wanted >50 million euros, ”wrote one of the modern top insiders Fabrizio Romano.

No less enthusiastic reviews about Mudrik’s game come from specialized publications and websites. WhoScored, for example, believes that Misha is Shakhtar’s best player in Leipzig, the score from the analytical portal is 8.3 (for comparison, goalkeeper Gulachi has 4.0, Shved has 8.2, Sudakov, who played superbly in the center of the field, has 7.5).

Sport Arena editor Yegor Danilov summed up his impressions of Mudrik’s performance in the match with Red Bull (Leipzig):

This fight is Mudrik’s most important benefit performance, one of the main matches in his career. Of the four goals of Shakhtar, Mikhail was directly involved in three: one scored himself, with a biting shot converting a longitudinal pass by Sudakov (the Pitmen’s third goal), in two more he gave assists to Shved and Traore. They, especially, of course, the second one, were performed at the highest level. Take and kill.

Indeed, sometimes we very seriously underestimate our cadres.

Here is the clearest illustration for you.

Europe would be proud of him, but he is ours!

Here are some numbers to understand the greatness of the 21-year-old Ukrainian winger’s match.

With a rather mediocre percentage of passing accuracy (55%, 6 out of 11), Mudrik provided two assists and scored from a single shot in the match. Misha ran 10 km and 710 m and reached a top speed of 33.6 km/h. These are the top numbers without any numbers.

We used to admire the distant, now it’s time to admire the near.

Of course, Mudrik is still not a fully formed player. He had huge problems working for the defense. It was he who did not run (and did not particularly try to run) when the opponent equalized the score – in other matches one can criticize mercilessly for this, now the victory has written off this, in general, Mikhail’s big mistake. Finally, he has a weak tackling skill – in this match, yellow for an unsuccessful tackle, often he is let down by his inability to tackle. Of course, this is forgivable for Mbappe or Holland, but in “earthly” football this will be required in any team.

But, damn it, Mikhail Mudrik has qualities for which not only Bayer, Brentford or Nice, but also Juve and Arsenal were rightly interested in him. And he put them on the table in the match with RB Leipzig, giving out one of the most striking individual performances of a Ukrainian football player in the Champions League over the past 10 years.

Therefore, never again say that Mikhail Mudrik is an empty shell. Criticize him for being lazy off the ball and on defense, demand more from him in regular matches, and not just in the exhibition game. But at the same time, understand that Mudrik is indeed one of the most talented domestic players of a whole generation, neither give nor take – a preparation of a future star. And how you want it to happen! And so that we have more such festive football evenings.

Yaroslav Smelyansky, Sport Arena