Andriy Shevchenko born September 29, 1976, Dvirkivschyna, Kiev Oblast) is a in Ukrainian football player who is a striker for A.C. Milan and the Ukrainian national team.
Shevchenko started off his career with Ukrainian side Dynamo Kyiv, with whom he won five league titles and two national cups in five seasons between 1994 and 1999. He has won one Serie A title, one UEFA Champions League, one European Super Cup, one Italian Cup and one Italian League Super Cup with Milan till now.
In 1999 Shevchenko joined the then 5-time European Cup champions AC Milan for $26 million and has been one of their key players since. Shevchenko made his Serie A debut on August 28, 1999 in a 2-2 draw with Lecce. The season turned out to be extremely fruitful personally, Shevchenko’s haul of 24 league goals in 32 matches earned him the highest scorer title in the Serie A, Andriy becoming, in the process, the first non-Italian player to do so in his debut season.
Andriy Shevchenko was nine when the Chernobyl nuclear disaster occurred in April 1986. His village, not far from Chernobyl, was also affected by the disaster, and his family was one amongst the thousands who had to abandon their homes and relocate to the coast to escape the after-effects. Later the same year, Andriy failed a dribbling test for entrance to a specialist sports school in Kyiv, as he had a mutated foot. But he happened to catch the sight of a Dynamo Kyiv scout while playing in a youth tournament, and was thus brought to the club. He was extremely successful in the youth system at the club, honing his skills in their junior teams.
In 1990, Andriy, playing for the Dynamo Kyiv Under-14 team in the Ian Rush Cup in Wales, top scored in the tournament, and was awarded a pair of Rush’s boots as prize by the Liverpool player himself.
In March 2000, Lobanovsky was made the Ukrainian national team manager, with the aim to take Ukraine to the 2002 World Cup. Shevchenko scored 10 goals in the qualifiers, but Ukraine failed to qualify after losing the playoff against Germany, and Lobanovsky was sacked. Shevchenko has represented Ukraine in 63 matches and scored 28 international goals. Now Andriy will play the World Cup 2006 in Germany with the Ukranian National Team.
