Shved backs Bhoys to be a Euro force
FORMER CELTIC WINGER SHVED REVEALS REASONS FOR RETURN TO WAR-TORN UKRAINE... AND HOLDS HANDS UP OVER PARKHEAD WOE
MARIAN SHVED says Celtic will become a competitive Champions League team under Ange Postecoglou.
The Shakhtar Donetsk winger played against his old club during the teams’ 1-1 draw in Warsaw and reckons the side has markedly improved since his own brief spell in Glasgow.
Postecoglou’s men bowed out of Europe with a 5-1 defeat to Real Madrid on Wednesday but, although they amassed a mere two points from the campaign, Shved insisted: ‘Celtic this season is stronger than the team which I played in. The coach Postecoglou has done some good work and I think they will be back again strong.’
MARIAN SHVED is lounging in a Lviv hotel room. He looks a little bleary-eyed but that’s understandable. A 5am air-raid siren woke him and his Shakhtar Donetsk team-mates from last night’s slumber and his body is now craving a post-lunch nap.
The klaxon was a false alarm, a now routine occurrence even in one of Ukraine’s safer cities in the ongoing war with Russia.
As a club, Shakhtar have been coping with various forms of disruption since 2014 when the Russians first invaded and forced the club away from their shiny new Donbass Arena and indeed out of Donetsk altogether.
Shved echoes the hope of the club’s hierarchy — and indeed the country’s President Volodymyr Zelensky — that they will eventually return to their home city but for now they are playing their domestic league matches in Lviv and, at the behest of UEFA, are crossing the Polish border to play their European matches in Warsaw.
It was there that Shved was reunited with his former Celtic
colleagues last month
Brendan Rodgers never told me that he was not going to use me
and, with the Champions League campaign now concluded for both clubs, it’s an apt moment to log on for a Zoom conversation.
We were originally scheduled to meet at Shakhtar’s team hotel in Glasgow the morning before the teams met in the return fixture at Celtic Park last month but an ongoing thigh injury prevented the 25-year-old from making the trip.
The muscular problem remains but he has endured enough in his career to cope with such a minor physical setback. Sat next to the very real stresses and dangers experienced by the Ukrainian people each and every day, it’s not hard for anyone at Shakhtar to place their sporting endeavours in context.
And yet this is a club that has proudly been playing for a cause.
Shved will go on to explain his reasons for eschewing a comfortable career in Western Europe to instead run towards a war zone over the summer but first we revisit his ill-fated move to Scotland.
Shved’s £2million transfer from Karpaty Lviv to Celtic in January 2019 is best remembered as the beginning of the very end for Brendan Rodgers, who issued his cutting ‘we’ve already got a million wingers’ quote by way of exposing his ongoing power struggle with the club’s then chief executive Peter Lawwell.
‘Maybe he already knew he was going to Leicester and that is why he said this,’ shrugs Shved. ‘But Rodgers never told me he was not going to use me.’
Shved may have been collateral damage in that particular battle but he holds no grudge against Rodgers or even his successor Neil Lennon, who simply chose not to use him when he returned to Scotland after first being loaned back Karpaty.
As becomes clear, he didn’t particularly rate Lennon as a coach but is happy to accept his share of the blame for his inability to shine at Celtic.
It started promisingly as he climbed off the bench to score a classy debut goal in a Champions League qualifier against Nomme
Kalju in Estonia.
Yet there were only two subsequent opportunities, both also from the bench, in low-key games against Ross County and Clyde.
‘At a big club like Celtic, there is a big competition between the players to play,’ adds Shved. ‘I was not afraid of that competition.
‘I think I had two weeks training with Rodgers and that was it. After that, Lennon came in but, in my opinion, he didn’t do anything good for us because the first season the team played well on the methods of Rodgers.
‘The second season showed Lennon’s skills as a coach. We lost against Cluj in the qualifiers for the Champions League and, of course, the results are the responsibility of the coach. I don’t think he trained us well. He was at the training every day but he did not control the process.
‘Look, the team still played well. As for me? I didn’t play and it’s my problem. That was not the problem of the coach.’
Shved refuses to blame culture shock for his lack of impact. Even at 21, he was already schooled in the art of adaptation.
‘Settling in a new country was not a problem to me,’ he continues. ‘I went to Sevilla when I was 17, so moving really was not an issue.
‘I liked Glasgow, even if the weather was a problem! I stayed at Park Circus, next to Kelvingrove Park and enjoyed it there.
‘I was friends with Boli Bolingoli and also Moritz Bauer. To this day, I still speak to Moritz.
‘They helped me every time with what I needed but that goes for everyone at the club. Celtic is a top club in terms of structure and everything else. The only one thing that was not good for me was that I was not playing.
‘That is why I decided to go to Belgium.’
After that year under Lennon, Shved moved to KV Mechelen on loan, a transfer that spared him being part of the club’s tilt at 10 in a row, a dream that collapsed in empty stadiums amid bad decisions and poor morale. The deal was made permanent last year just as Ange Postecoglou was arriving to commence his rebuild of the club.
Shved has no regrets that he didn’t stick around longer, especially now that he has been handed the chance to play for Ukraine’s pre-eminent club.
‘The decision to return to Ukraine was a football choice,’ he says. ‘First of all, I was signing for a Champions League club with the chance to play in the most important tournament in Europe.
‘Secondly, it’s because I know the coach well and I want to work with him again. Thirdly, I want to become domestic champion with Ukraine.
‘The team is now in Lviv and it feels safe here. We try to train every day but, of course, sometimes things are not good.
‘For example, this morning we had a siren at 5am and I woke up. But we understand the situation and I think that peace is coming. My family in is Lviv. In general, it’s safe. Of course, as Ukrainians, we
live with sirens, with the thought that we must always be careful.
‘I am confident life will go back to normal. We thank all our soldiers, our army, who are fighting for us. I hope that we win. And I hope that normal life will be back.
‘Of course, I believe that our team will go back home to Donetsk.’
Previously capped twice by his country, Shved’s move home won’t hurt his international prospects either. He broke through as a teenager at Karpaty under Igor Jovicevic, the Croatian coach who was poached by Shakhtar from Dnipro over the summer.
Shved was one of his first signings and the bond between the two was evident as Shved ran into the arms of his coach after scoring the the second of his two goals in the 4-1 win over RB Leipzig in the opening Champions League game.
‘We wanted to get off to a good start and it felt like we wanted to win more than Leipzig that night,’ he says. ‘It was my ambition to score on that stage but maybe I was a little bit lucky. I think everyone saw how those goals happened!’
Gifted his first after an awful pass by Leipzig keeper Peter Gulacsi and aided by a generous deflection for his second, Shved nevertheless went into the second game against Celtic feeling confident and highly motivated.
‘I can tell you that while I was waiting for my transfer to be finalised, I was watching the
Champions League draw,’ he says. ‘I wanted to play against Celtic so much and I really wanted to go back to play at Celtic Park. It was really tough to miss out.’
Shved started the 1-1 draw in Warsaw but was overshadowed by his gifted team-mate Mykhaylo Mudryk, the young Ukrainian international who is coveted by a host of Europe’s top clubs. Mudryk was again on the scoresheet as the club’s chalked up a second 1-1 draw in Glasgow.
Those results simultaneously thwarted Shakhtar’s hopes of qualifying for the last 16 and condemned Celtic to the bottom of Group F.
The points picked up by Shakhtar against Leipzig and Real Madrid mean they will parachute into a Europa League play-off but, while Celtic are now out of Europe, Shved has backed the to return stronger.
‘I think Celtic have had a good campaign,’ he muses. ‘Maybe they were a bit unlucky in several of the matches because they kept creating chances.
‘There are many staff still at the club from my time. John Kennedy, Stevie Woods. Players like Callum McGregor and Greg Taylor. We spoke briefly in Warsaw but it was a brief: “Hello, how are you?”
‘Celtic this season is stronger than the team which I played in. I think it’s a good job of the coach Ange Postecoglou. He has done some very good work and I think they will be back again strong.’
With that it’s time to end the call. It’s time for Shved to rest those sleepy eyes.
I didn’t play at Celtic and it’s my problem. Not the problem of the coach