Shevchenko's debt to Reds hero Rush

14 April 2012

Ian Rush can't quite picture the awe-struck kid to whom he presented the prize but he's heard enough since to realise their unlikely meeting in Aberystwyth 15 summers ago may have helped create a monster which could devour the ambitions of his beloved Liverpool in tomorrow's European Cup Final.

Andriy Shevchenko was just 13 when, as starlet of a victorious Dynamo Kiev junior team, he won the player of the tournament award at one of the first editions of the international youth tournament which Rush organised and which bore his name. His trophy? A pair of the Anfield legend's boots.

"To tell the truth, 15 years on, I can hardly remember it but I feel quite humble that it obviously made such an impact on a boy who's become such a great player," said Rush.

He's right; these days, Shevchenko still reflects starry-eyed about his boyhood hero: "I treasured those boots for years. It meant such a lot because everyone in Ukraine knew about Ian Rush, the legendary Liverpool player," he said.

"Funnily enough, the boots were too small for me but I still tried to play in them - until my big toes poked through. I even tried to cover up the holes because I wasn't able to buy new boots as nice as them. It would be great to think now Ian Rush is watching to see how I've developed since back then."

Well, Rush, a member of Liverpool's last European Cup-winning crew in 1984, has been watching and both loves and fears what he sees. "It's ironic, isn't it?" he said. "Because you look at him at AC Milan now and say if anyone's going to stop Liverpool from winning, it's going to be Shevchenko.

"Back at my tournament, I remember people saying the kid had something special. Now, to my mind, he's the best, most complete striker in Europe and probably the world. What I admire is that ability to score all kinds of different goals; headers, both feet . . . his movement within the box is fantastic but he's just as dangerous outside too." Rush, who flies off to Istanbul today as a club guest, chuckled almost guiltily that his contribution to Milan's attacking cause doesn't end with inspiring Shevchenko. In the later years of Rush's career at Newcastle, an unhappy, muchmaligned Danish striker in the reserves, one Jon-Dahl Tomasson, came to him for advice.

"He'd had a hard time and I basically said 'keep your head down, work, get fit and your confidence and time will come'," recalled Rush. He was right. Tomasson has scored big goals for Milan, none more critical than the one in the dying seconds of the semi-final first leg against PSV Eindhoven four weeks ago.

Yet it is Shevchenko, the European Footballer of the Year, who naturally concentrates Liverpudlian minds. There are some similarities with Rush, since both emerged from countries who were hardly footballing powers to become just about the best in the business. Both also know the sweet feeling of scoring in a penalty shoot-out to win the European Cup. Rush broke Roman hearts in 1984 while Shevchenko converted the winner at Old Trafford against Juventus two years ago.

Yet the real measure of Shevchenko's quality is that he succeeded in the only area where Rush failed. While Italy never saw the best of the Welshman at Juventus, Milan took a gamble on a brilliant young Ukrainian who was expected to become just another homesick east European misfit in the west - in Sergei Rebrov, Tottenham got the lesser half of the double act, naturally - and struck the jackpot.

For apart from the predator's gift which has seen him record the staggering strike rate for Serie A of 108 goals in 181 games and even beyond the leading sports scientist at the fabled 'Milan lab' labelling him a "physical phenomenon", it's also the remarkable spirit and toughness of this Soviet army officer's son which marks him out as exceptional.

Last season, he got his front teeth kicked out in a game but was back scoring in no time. Only in February, a flying elbow smashed his eye socket in two places, an injury so serious it was feared briefly his sight might be threatened. He's since had five titanium plates inserted to reinforce the bone yet gently refused doctor's orders to wear a protective face mask when he returned. It has not remotely stemmed his flow of goals.

Perhaps Shevchenko's background gives a clue to why he adapted to the culture shock of life in Italy so stoically from the start.

As a nine-year-old boy, the nuclear reactor exploded at Chernobyl, some 80 miles from his home in the village of Dvirkivshchyna. With other local children still bemused by the lack of information about what had really happened, he was evacuated to Crimea for three months to escape the fall-out.

The memory lingered with this serious, thoughtful figure - "I couldn't stop thinking about the small village next to Chernobyl where the people had to leave in the middle of the night, not even able to pack a single suitcase," he recalled recently - and he's often made a point of dedicating his goals to those who suffered and who still suffer from that tragedy.

He's a world away now, the owner of Armani boutiques back in his Ukraine homeland while living in a luxury villa in an idyllic spot near Lake Como with his American exmodel wife and their seven-month old baby.

Yet football recently has been rather less kind to his idol Rush, who left his first coaching post at Chester last month in acrimonious circumstances. One of the first people to ring and offer support and advice after he'd left Chester was Liverpool boss Rafael Benitez, which only heightened Rush's belief that, as well as being "a great coach who's the reason we've got to the final", the Spaniard was a big-hearted one too. Now, an old Anfield legend fancies a new one will be forged with Benitez fashioning victory tomorrow. "On penalties, I think," he added.

As for Shevchenko, he'd love to meet up with him in Istanbul. "Er, but not if he's scored the winner," said Rush. "Perhaps I should pull out another pair of my boots with holes in and suggest he wears those."

MORE ABOUT

Andriy Shevchenko

Kiev

Shevchenko's debt to Reds hero Rush

Read More