Kieran Gill’s piece on Chelsea’s preseason so far was full of interesting bits, not least on the subject of Mykhailo Mudryk.
Despite a couple of flashes, the winger has continually struggled since making a £62.5m move from Shakhtar in January 2023. He’s had a few managers now, and each has used a different system and tried different things to get him playing, but barring a few moments it’s been disappointing.
The 23 year old isn’t giving up however. He’s determined to make a good impression in training, even if he still doesn’t really appear to know what to do during games.
Gill notes that FIFPro recommends that players are given a four week break after summer international tournaments – Mudryk exited the Euros with Ukraine on the 26th of June, meaning he wouldn’t be due back for another week from now. But instead he turned up on Monday July 8th for the first day of , less than halfway into the four week period.
The idea is to impress his latest manager with his dedication, and we’re sure Maresca appreciates it.
A good message – but will it work?
As plenty of people are pointing out in the comments underneath, this is all well and good – but unless he actually improves, it’s all for naught.
We saw plenty of similar examples of his dedication last season – we’re pretty sure he cut short his holidays a year ago too after playing for Ukraine’s Under-21 team in the Euros last summer. But in the end we saw the same issues on the pitch in May 2024 that we did in January 2023.
It’s all well and good being available for every session – if they don’t actually change your game, you’d have been better off on holiday getting as fresh as possible for the new season.
