Euro 2024 has been the tournament for big men to become fashionable again and there have been few bigger men than Yaremchuk. Standing at approximately 6’3” and reasonably wide, Yaremchuk is an aggressive striker and has been brought in by coach Sergiy Rebrov to make a difference. Coming into the match, 28-year-old Yaremchuk is Ukraine’s joint-fourth highest scorer. All time (15 goals), tied with Rebrov. The coach now hopes that he will soon move to fifth place in the list.
Shaparenko’s vision is delightful but it’s what comes next that makes it so magical. Yaremchuk executes an impeccable trajectory as the ball falls over his right shoulder. A few steps and he extends his right leg. He’s almost splitting at this point. He is on the toes of his left foot and has stretched every fiber of his body to reach his right foot. It bounces off his boot, and then… the ball stops. Like he ordered it to stop. All of Shaparenko’s momentum through the ball is converted into a light bounce that is not a millimeter away from where Yaremchuk wants it. The touch had to be perfect to evoke a Bergkamp-esque lightness, and it was.
In fact, the lightness of touch was even more remarkable considering the weight on his shoulders. Ukraine – like Palestine at this year’s Asian Cup – is playing for more than just national pride in Germany. Representing a country devastated by war, it is a collection of players who have had to be stronger than ever to perform at their level.
A little more than Yaremchuk. The man who once apparently ate 13 meals a day (according to wife Christina) couldn’t do so for weeks after Russia’s invasion in early 2022. He couldn’t even sleep, and it all ended with him eating six kilograms of body weight… and a complete lack of form on the pitch.
He was a Benfica player at the time, having begun his major goalscoring rise following a 2021 season in which he scored for Gent and Ukraine at the Euros. The following years were considered his prime years.
Four days after the outbreak of war, Yaremchuk would be brought on as a sub in a league match, and Lisbon’s great Estadio de Luz would stand to applaud him. You can see him jogging, getting wet and then stopping, his lower lip trembling as he struggles to control his emotions… It was an incredibly touching scene and one that It deeply reflected the trauma he was going through.
This moment… speechless! pic.twitter.com/EpgNydnZer
– SL Benfica (@slbenfica_en) 27 February 2022
Beset by concerns, his season ended and he was eventually transferred to Club Brugge. Benfica president Rui Costa would say at the time, “Yaremchuk deserves praise for the work he has done at Benfica. People have no idea what he was going through last season in between the war and his parents. ..He was always in a tremendous mood in training, but with difficulty, real difficulty, in being able to do what he knew how to do.
It didn’t really work out in Belgium the following season either and he is now on loan at Valencia. After struggling for goals for two years, he finally found a hint of goalscoring form in Spain. After not scoring in 18 LaLiga matches in 2023, he scored three times in 10 matches between January and March this calendar year (and in 17 minutes of the 11th match when he was injured). He was also important for Ukraine in that period, scoring and assisting from the bench in a 2–1 win against Bosnia in a crucial European qualifier playoff.
This confidence will be important for what happens next.
If the first touch was one of pure football genius, the second touch is taken by someone who remembers how a goal is actually scored. With Martin Dubravka not coming too far off his line and Milan Skriniar well away, Yaremchuk knows cleverness is the answer. Instead of pouncing on it – thrilled by the perfection of that first touch – he simply lifts his right foot again and nuzzles the bouncing ball with the bottom of his boot. And it rolls towards the target at an agonizingly slow pace. So slowly that the screener gets there with almost a desperate jerk, but fast enough to cross the line before he reaches it. Perfection.
2-1 Ukraine and it will stay like that. After the match Rebrov said, “There was a different feeling – I’m happy for the players – they showed the spirit of Ukraine and deserved this victory. It was important to win for our country, our fighters, our supporters.”
Meanwhile, the Düsseldorf Arena began to creak as thousands of Ukrainian fans celebrated wildly: Rebrov’s words in visual form. Many fans there now call the city home after becoming refugees of this brutal war, and it was their team that was stepping up to provide them all with a little hope, a little happiness, during this darkest of times. And it all happened through the incredible ease of Roman Yaremchuk’s talented first touch.
For this, Yaremchuk takes our moment of the day from Day 8 of Euro 2024.
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