Two of the biggest surprises in these European Championship finals have to do with Ukraine.

One is generally the performance of the national team, which was not expected to do much before the tournament, but is now in the quarter-finals and this Saturday (6 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the European Football Championship, on ARD and MagentaTV) on England meets.

The second surprise is Andrei Yarmolenko in particular.

Thomas Klemm

Editor in the "Money & More" section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

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    The Ukrainian captain plays, shoots and jokes to his heart's content and has been involved in five of the previous six Ukrainian tournament goals. He scored twice himself, including splendidly from a distance in the 2: 3 opening game against the Netherlands, and prepared three goals. He is now on a par with the idol Andrei Shevchenko, once a star striker and now the national coach of Ukraine (four goals, one preparation). Jarmolenko explained his surprisingly successful EM days that he is enjoying the trust he has placed in us.

    Until a few weeks ago it looked like the 2020/21 football season would be one to forget for the 31-year-old.

    In his third season with the Premier League club West Ham United, the attacker hardly got beyond a supporting role.

    He fell ill with Covid-19 last November and was forced to take a three-week break.

    At the beginning of February he suffered a torn ligament in his knee and was not ready for action again until mid-April.

    With 15 appearances and zero goals, Jarmolenko was not much of a help to his English club and there had been doubts about how much the national team could count on the striker's qualities.

    "It's something special for him"

    Well, Jarmolenko easily refuted the skepticism and, together with his strike partner Roman Yaremchuk, made a significant contribution to the fact that the Ukrainians are among the last eight in a major tournament for the second time since the 2006 World Cup. The fact that many people wrote him off, said Yarmolenko, "motivated me even more". That he could hardly wait was shown by the fact that he had traveled to the training camp earlier.

    Andrei Jarmolenko has another punch line in store for Andrei Jarmolenko: he will meet his colleagues from the Premier League, where he has been earning his money in London for three years. “It's something special for him,” says his Ukrainian team-mate Ruslan Malinowski: “It's an opportunity for him to show what a good player he is and that he deserves to play in the Premier League.” At West Ham United are not that convinced of that. According to media reports, the club is trying to transfer Yarmolenko to Dynamo Kiev despite an ongoing contract. To the place where the attacker grew up and played a decade before venturing abroad: to Borussia Dortmund.

    Committed for 25 million euros, Jarmolenko was supposed to replace Ousmane Dembélé, who had switched to FC Barcelona, ​​at the Bundesliga club. But apart from his first Bundesliga goal, which he scored with the hoe, the Ukrainian made little impression in the 26 competitive games in the BVB jersey. His former Kiev team-mate, the Austrian Aleksandar Dragovic, speaks about him with much more appreciation. Jarmolenko is “an outstanding kicker” who, as a left footer, usually plays on the right side: “That means he pulls nine times out of ten in the middle.” The English know that too. Let's see if Andrei Jarmolenko can surprise them.