“To become a professional football player from the place where I was born and raised was almost impossible. It was super, super tough,” Oleksandr Zinchenko says as his eyes widen and we consider how far he has come from his small home town of Radomyshl in northern Ukraine. “We didn’t have many facilities and we trained only twice a week, for one game, and this is not the way to become a professional. It was a pure joy to play and train with my local team but I was always wanting more. My mother said she saw the fire in my eyes to make it.”
We sit in a light and airy room on a beautiful autumn afternoon in Hampstead. In Ukraine, as a devastating war grinds on, winter will be another brutal test. Zinchenko picks up his phone. “This morning my aunt sent me a video,” he says. “She has been working in a nursery for more than 30 years. The video shows where she was hiding in the shelter from 7.30 until 10.30 because there was a siren. Working with kids, she cannot take any risk.”
The Arsenal defender and Ukraine captain cannot shake the war from his mind. His mother still lives in Radomyshl and he confirms that “all my family are in Ukraine”. Zinchenko, who is 27, pauses. “But I think I’m more helpful talking here than over there. You have footballers playing in the Ukrainian league and there is suddenly a siren. All of them need to hide in the shelter. I’m showing these videos to my [Arsenal] teammates and they can’t believe we are living this life. It’s crazy.”
We will soon discuss Zinchenko’s new autobiography, Believe, written with the skilful help of Raphael Honigstein, as it offers fascinating insights into the tactics, demands and revelations of playing for Pep Guardiola at Manchester City and Mikel Arteta at Arsenal. It is also a moving account of Zinchenko’s life in Ukraine and how he has been thrust into a position of national importance.
Zinchenko recalls how, when meeting Volodymyr Zelenskyy, he cut all formalities to say: “Mr President, this isn’t part of the script, but these words come from deep inside my heart. All my family and friends feel the same. I don’t know what would happen to our country if you weren’t there.” Zinchenko shakes his head.
“Sometimes I’m trying to put myself in [Zelenskyy’s] place but this is impossible. I don’t know this pressure – but looking into his eyes you can see how tough everything is. You see it from pictures of when he became president, and his face now. Every time I’m reading the news, I’m praying it will finish soon because I know how many people died from this war.”
Zinchenko strives to be diplomatic when asked if he fears that the world has turned its attention away from Ukraine. “I can’t be grateful enough for everything that people around the world are doing for us. This help could be in different ways. Some people can donate, some people can take refugees. Even seeing a sticker with a Ukrainian flag on a car gives me a boost and belief that we are not alone. At the same time I understand there is some fatigue with this war. But listen, if you put yourself in our position, we cannot give up, right? That’s why we need to stick together as this is the only way to show justice and to bring peace.”
Football offers respite, despite Zinchenko’s recent struggle with injury. On Tuesday night, in the Champions League, Arsenal are at home against Shakhtar Donetsk, the Ukrainian club where he faced difficulties at the start of his career. Zinchenko was determined as a 17-year-old to find a route into regular first‑team football but Shakhtar were in thrall then to a group of talented Brazilians – Fernandinho, Willian, Douglas Costa and Alex Teixeira. Zinchenko asked the club if they saw him as a genuine prospect or simply as a player to farm out on loan. When the less flattering perspective became obvious, Zinchenko refused to sign a new contract. With his existing deal having another year to run, the standoff escalated. As Zinchenko writes: “I briefly thought about giving up. This was the darkest hour. I felt invisible.”
He stresses now that he still loves Shakhtar but, in February 2015, having just turned 18, he took desperate measures. Zinchenko joined Ufa in the Russian Premier League. A year later his world was transformed when, much to his disbelief, Manchester City signed him. City had tracked Zinchenko after spotting him at a Youth Champions League game between Shakhtar and Arsenal.
Guardiola had just become City manager and Zinchenko jumped at the opportunity without negotiating a rigorous contract. As he notes in his book: “The City lawyers said: ‘Look, this is an academy player contract, right? As soon as you make your first official game for City, we’re going to extend your contract with the real money that we pay full professionals. Not this academy player deal. So trust us.’ Of course I said yes. Follow the dream. But do you know when my next contract came? The one that put me on full professional money? After I had played 43 games in the Premier League! I won two Premier League titles playing on an academy contract.”
Zinchenko realised that football is a harsh business, but today he is far more interested in the positive experiences of learning so much under Guardiola. When I ask if he has followed City’s battle with the Premier League , which has charged the club with 130 breaches of its financial rules – City deny any wrongdoing – Zinchenko shrugs. “I’m not following this at all. I’m just focusing on the football,” he insists. “I don’t know what’s happening there.”
It’s an understandable deflection, especially considering the increasingly intense rivalry between City and Arsenal. Zinchenko, instead, provides compelling accounts of being managed by Guardiola and Arteta. At first he would be mentally exhausted after every training session under Guardiola because the level of coaching, and the amount of information he had to absorb, was almost overwhelming. The fierce intelligence and relentless drive of Guardiola soon inspired him.
Zinchenko learned that Guardiola never shouted, and his team talks at half-time always carried a message of positive reinforcement. But you don’t become the best manager in the world without a ruthless mentality. Zinchenko looks rueful when he remembers the day that he made the mistake of questioning Guardiola after he had criticised a pass in training.
“Out loud I said: ‘Mister! Like, I just did one wrong pass, you know?’ And his reaction was incredible,” Zinchenko writes in his book. “‘Oh, okay, sorry, sorry, Mr Zinchenko. Sorry,’ said Pep. ‘Okay, guys, thank you, everyone inside.’ And he went in, walked to the changing room. Training over, all because I talked back. I knew I was in trouble.” Zinchenko was on the bench for the next game.
“Listen, first of all, I was not right,” he acknowledges now. “I understood straight away, but it would have been silly if I went right to his office and apologised. It was game day minus one and I knew his head was totally on the gameplan. But I did apologise after the game.”
after newsletter promotion
Guardiola forgave Zinchenko and their bond strengthened. On the night City won the treble in June 2023, a year after Zinchenko had left for Arsenal, Guardiola called him. “I can only imagine how much they celebrated after the game, and I guess no one was sleeping that night, but to get a call from Pep? I couldn’t believe it. He said: ‘Alex, you are a big part of this.’ I was fully surprised in a good way. I said to him, again, a massive thanks for everything he did for me. It shows how good-humoured he could be.”
Zinchenko talks amusingly of how Arteta keeps his squad energised and aware of the need to remain vigilant. It emerged in the summer that the Spaniard once brought in a group of professional pickpockets to steal things from his oblivious players at a team-bonding exercise. Their watches and wallets were soon returned. Zinchenko was not a victim that time but he was picked out by Arteta in a different stunt.
“We stayed at the same hotel before a match,” Zinchenko recalls, “and we knew all the waiters. But there was a new guy that day. So before we go to the stadium [Arteta] said: ‘OK guys, let me wake you up, because we need energy. Last time, Alex, we played staff against players and you beat [the set-piece coach] Nicolas [Jover]. Let’s do it the same, but freestyling. Everyone was like: ‘What? For sure, Alex will beat him, blah blah blah’. Nico started to do something with the ball and then suddenly it looks like he got an injury. It was so obvious but weird. Then they called the new waiter. We didn’t know he was a professional freestyler. He destroyed me with his tricks and all of us were in deep shock. But then we were all laughing and we went to the game with good energy.”
When Zinchenko arrived at Arsenal in 2022 he and Gabriel Jesus, his former City teammate, agreed: Arsenal had the talent if not quite the conviction. “I remember me and Gabi said: ‘Wow, the quality is unbelievable and the energy and desire to learn every day is there. The only piece missing is belief.’”
We talk before the poor display in defeat at Bournemouth last Saturday and Zinchenko suggests that Arsenal now have this belief. “Yes, I think so. That’s what I feel in the dressing room and on the pitch. That’s what I see from everyone now.”
Zinchenko, nursing his injured calf, was at home last month when he watched Arsenal, down to 10 men, hold off City at the Etihad Stadium until they finally conceded a 97th-minute equaliser. “I dropped a message in the group chat after the game. I just said: ‘You fucking warriors. Honestly, you are warriors.’ Wow, the second half was unbelievable because we all know how tough it is to play away against the best team in the world.”
His face lights up but I wonder how he copes with this protracted injury? “No one deals with this well, because it’s super tough. But in these moments you remember that in some parts of the world people walk for 20km to get a piece of bread. So you tell yourself: ‘How can you complain?’ But of course it’s painful to not be part of the team.”
He is hopeful that he is “not far” from returning. But Zinchenko faces a struggle to force his way back into the team as Jurriën Timber and Riccardo Calafiori have been such impressive additions at full-back. “At City, every single time I had a major competition for my place with one of the best players in the world. It’s positive for the club because these kinds of players make the team better.”
This fiery resolve and unified positivity has taken Zinchenko all the way from Radomyshl to north London, and it will surely sustain him in the testing months ahead at Arsenal and, far more urgently, for Ukraine. He stretches out his hand and smiles, as determined as ever to make the most of life, despite the challenges and difficulties.
Believe by Oleksandr Zinchenko is published by Bloomsbury.
Source: theguardian.com
