AThe sporting history of ndriy Shevchenko is to be admired, he went from national football to Ukraine to become one of the most legendary center-forward of the modern era, then to come full circle he became the national team coach, but there was pain in his life, the former striker confirming that his Kiev friends are all dead.

Shevchenko wrote the intimate details of his life and childhood in a new book ‘La mia vita, il mio calcium‘, which was written by Alessandro Alciato.

In 1986, Ukraine was still part of the Soviet Union and the Chernobyl disaster took place about 200 kilometers from where Shevchenko was growing up.

“I hope not to surprise anyone by saying that everything seemed normal to me”, Shevchenko explained in an interview with Corriere Della Sera.

“I was 10 years old, I was having a lot of fun playing football everywhere, they took me to Dynamo Kyiv academy.

“Then Reactor 4 exploded and they took us all away, I still feel pain, USSR buses came and took all of the children between the ages of 6 and 15 away. I was 1500 kilometers from home and I remember living as if I were in a movie.

What followed was the collapse of the USSR, although ShevchenkoChernobyl’s own difficulties do not stem from the Chernobyl disaster, but rather from other influences in life.

“In my neighborhood, I started to have less and less, all my friends died, not from radiation, but from alcohol, drugs or weapons problems,” he added. .

“The cracks in the wall of the USSR were getting bigger and bigger, the world we knew was collapsing, and like everyone else, my friends no longer believed in anything and got lost.

“It was only the love and football of my parents that saved me.”