Kudrivka midfielder Yevhenii Smyrnyi has been named in the team of round seven of the Ukrainian Premier League. Thirty-eight experts put him on the list of the eleven best players of the round.

FC Kudrivka announced this.

What he did

In the match against Kolos Kovalivka in Rivne, Smyrnyi scored twice — in the 19th and the 62nd minutes. Both of his team’s goals in that game were his, and they were his first for Kudrivka.

The first came from a set piece: Oleh Bieliaiev delivered the free kick, Andrii Dumaniuk headed it on to the far post, and Smyrnyi, unmarked, put the ball into the empty corner. The second he made himself — cutting in from the flank and striking so that the ball went in off the bar into the far top corner.

There is a separate story in who he scored against. Smyrnyi played 63 matches for Kolos Kovalivka and scored seven goals there — more appearances than for any other club. Now he has added two more against them.

It did not change the result, unfortunately — the visitors replied with three goals from Oleksandr Demchenko, Danylo Khrypchuk and Denys Ndukwe and took their first win of the season. Kudrivka lost 2-3 in a match stopped by an air-raid alert.

Who Smyrnyi is

Yevhenii Smyrnyi is 28: he was born on 18 August 1998 in Kyiv. A graduate of the Dynamo Kyiv school, he played nine matches and scored once in the UEFA Youth League and made his UPL debut at twenty. His career then took him to Kolos, Chornomorets Odesa (11 matches, 2 goals) and Oleksandriia (47 matches, 2 goals), along with five European club games and call-ups to Ukraine’s youth and under-21 sides.

Kudrivka announced a full contract with him on 24 June — he was the team’s first summer signing. In the club’s UPL squad list he appears from 30 July, wearing the number eight. Before the brace in Rivne he had not scored for his new club.

The card with which Kudrivka announced the signing of Yevhenii Smyrnyi in JunePhoto: FC Kudrivka
The card with which Kudrivka announced the signing of Yevhenii Smyrnyi in June

What comes next

Kudrivka’s next game is the postponed round-six match against Veres Rivne on Saturday, 3 October, at 13:00.

As a reminder, the youth teams of Kudrivka and Kolos took two days to finish their match and drew — the club announced the Veres date in the same post.