[misha]

Sheva: Kaka is my heir

Andriy Shevchenko believes that Brazilian starlet Kaka will become his successor at Milan. “He is an extraordinary player,” stated the Ukrainian.

The Rossoneri have failed to find a replacement for the striker after his summer move to Chelsea and are suffering a goal drought, resulting in three straight goalless draws, but Sheva is confident that things will change.

“There is a man who can become my heir and that is Kaka, he is an exceptional player who still has an enormous potential,” said the player to La Gazzetta dello Sport.

“You haven’t yet seen what he can really do, I am sure he will write an important page in the history of Milan.

“I have heard of a small disagreement between him and Coach Carlo Ancelotti, but there are always discussions in football teams. I don’t think that represents a problem just as long as there is mutual respect.

“Milan’s form? We all go through bad periods as I am not scoring either, but these things can happen. You just need to be patient and wait for things to improve.

“Ricardo Oliveira? He mustn’t feel he is constantly compared with me, when I started everyone reminded me of Marco Van Basten’s performances,” continued Shevchenko, who has just turned 30.

Sheva joined the Stamford Bridge outfit in a £31m move this summer, but so far has been overshadowed by Didier Drogba.

As a result there have been rumours suggesting he may consider a return to Italy, whispers that he immediately dismissed.

“I am glad about the choice I made, this is the life I chose for myself and my family, life goes beyond football,” he added.

“My move had nothing to do with the money and life for a football player is easier in London.

“It’s much more simple and there is not all the pressure there is in Italy, football is a show that finishes once the game is over.

“This is the truth behind my move. If someone doesn’t believe me it’s maybe because they are not used to saying the truth,” concluded Sheva.

link

[dst]

Oh sh1t ... then he is leaving !! (IMG:http://cyrus.medialayer.net/~m1ke/milanfan.com/forums/style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif)

[LaPalma]

“It’s much more simple and there is not all the pressure there is in Italy, football is a show that finishes once the game is over.

Finally he reveals the truth (IMG:http://cyrus.medialayer.net/~m1ke/milanfan.com/forums/style_emoticons/default/laugh.gif)

[mishie]

theres not the pressure in england because everyone knows that the league is awful!!
how many world class players have gone to the E.P.L in thier prime??

[Jack Sparrow]

Henry, Bergkamp, Ballack...actually u know I'm not so sure, they qualify...

[mishie]

henry was bought as a falied winger and wasn't half the player he is now,bergkamp possibly but left the merda after having a nightmare couple of seasons and ballack is 30 not what i call in his prime

[LaPalma]

Henry, Bergkamp, Ballack...actually u know I'm not so sure, they qualify...

Do not forget Makelele, Lampard (yes fat Frank), Gerrard, Essien and Robben...and Fabregas...

[mishie]

Do not forget Makelele, Lampard (yes fat Frank), Gerrard, Essien and Robben...and Fabregas...

lampard 'gerrard are english so they don't count they aren't imports!
essien not sure he's world class yet, fabregas wasn't world class when he arrived he's another wenger miracle!! makele was he in his prime when he came i have to admit i don't know about him!

[dst]

well EPL is not exactly bad ... I mean yeah I don't really like how the football's played over there at the Big Isle but it's certainly not what I call bad ... at least all the stadiums are full !! (IMG:http://cyrus.medialayer.net/~m1ke/milanfan.com/forums/style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif)

And yes Makelele was in his prime when he went over to Chelski (then Chelsea) ... I still can't get it why Madrid let him go, that decision still haunts him (maybe Diarra will cover up for it). Only Madrid could sell one of their best players for not being a jersey-seller !! (IMG:http://cyrus.medialayer.net/~m1ke/milanfan.com/forums/style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif) (IMG:http://cyrus.medialayer.net/~m1ke/milanfan.com/forums/style_emoticons/default/puke.gif)

This post has been edited by dst: Oct 5 2006, 07:02 PM

[kakaisluv]

well i likes the combination of kaka and sheva when he was in milan ... but now im kinda dissapointed by sheva's performance .. hope hell get back to his old ways .. im sad he dint play for ukraine as well cuz of the fever

[misha]

[B]Why is Shevchenko struggling to adapt to the Premiership?[/B]

Is Chelsea's new boy simply past his best, or are there other reasons for his early-season troubles?

At first, it sounds like one of those ubiquitous and annoying riddles that actually has no answer. Marlon King can do it but Andriy Shevchenko can't. Mark Atkins could do it but Juan Veron couldn't. Thierry Henry and Dennis Bergkamp couldn't do it for a couple of months but then did it brilliantly. Robert Pires took a season before he could do it. Shaun Goater did it from the off. Scandinavians generally do it much better than South Americans. What is it?

Hack life in the Premiership, that's what. Seeing a player as good as Shevchenko struggle so badly is startling and excruciating; while English football is clearly a genre unto itself, no genuinely world-class player should be unable to adapt. Yet the reality is that the purchase of foreign players is such an inexact science - even the master, Arsène Wenger, paid good money for the likes of Pascal Cygan, Kaba Diawara and Oleg Luzhny - that, to borrow from William Goldman's treatise on Hollywood, nobody knows anything: why Shevchenko is struggling, when his struggles will end, whether they will end, or why any world-class players would struggle in England. But here are six possible theories.

1. He just needs time

Arguably, it would be more of a surprise if Shevchenko didn't struggle initially. Most of the greatest foreign players have: Dennis Bergkamp did not score until his eighth game for Arsenal, Thierry Henry until his ninth, during which time both were ridiculed by the tabloids, while Eric Cantona was a bit-part player at Leeds for almost a year before moving across the Pennines to find his natural stage. Indeed, the irony of Shevchenko's woes being exacerbated by the blistering form of Didier Drogba, who for two seasons was apparently not cut out for the Premiership, will not be lost on Jose Mourinho. If the good will out, the great - and Shevchenko is certainly that - should have nothing to worry about.

He just needs time. Generally the chief strugglers have been the attackers. More universal footballers such as Claude Makelele, Gabriel Heinze, Sami Hyypia and Peter Schmeichel have found that their job descriptions have changed very little upon arrival in England. Attackers are different, and yet the perception remains that it is defences which need time to gel; that the back four is the great unrotatable of football. In reality it's the opposite: destruction is intrinsically easier than creation, and attacking players need just as much time as defenders to establish rhythms, connection, understanding.

2. He can't handle the muck and bullets

As Roy Keane said, in reference to Veron, the idea that world-class players cannot handle the "muck and bullets" of the Premiership is nonsense. The notion that English football is too fast, that foreigners don't like it up 'em, is a grotesque oversimplification borne of an almost colonial contempt. If it was as simple as that, England could pick the Watford team and rule the waves. The Premiership is certainly more robust than most leagues, and British beef is not to everyone's taste, but the success of pint-sized technicians like Juninho and Gianfranco Zola suggests it is a long way from being a determining factor. Besides, the likes of Paolo Montero were hardly treading on eggshells while trying to stop Shevchenko in his Serie A days.

3. It's all in his head

Many of the Premiership's greatest flops - Veron, Diego Forlan, Serhiy Rebrov, Albert Luque - have been meek, diffident characters; fairweather friends who squeeze tight to the smooth and recoil at the rough. The same can be said of José Antonio Reyes: he was not so much kicked out of football by the Neville brothers as kicked out of playing his normal game. As his ankles were bitten, so his toes stopped twinkling. Contrast that with Cristiano Ronaldo, who has the mental courage and self-belief to keep knocking at the door no matter how many times he is told where to go.

Reyes and Veron, like Ian Rush when he went to Italy, also exhibited classic symptoms of homesickness. Sometimes, playing football abroad really is like being in a foreign country. Or a player might suffer from personal problems - things which do not relate directly to the job but which impinge significantly upon it. Sometimes, it really can be something as ostensibly straightforward as that: sometimes, for no apparent reason, you get bad vibes which never quite go away. But the fact that Shevchenko, and his wife Kristen Pazik, has occupied as many column inches in the gossip sections of the tabloids as the sports pages suggests that life in London suits him just fine.

4. He is being misused tactically

There is significant precedent here: Veron was signed on a whim in 2001 by an excitable manager who suddenly had money to burn (Ferguson's principal target that summer was Patrick Vieira, an entirely different type of central midfielder) and many feel his failure was down to mismanagement. Hindsight shows he was a poor signing in the first place - United's orchestral midfield had room for only one conductor, the peerless Keane - and then, upon realizing that problem, Ferguson tried to get round it by shunting Veron onto the right of midfield.

In many senses, Veron was a Championship Manager purchase, bought for who he was and what he represented rather than after a conclusive analysis of how he might fit into the team. The same applies to Luque, Rebrov and Kleberson, who were all bought without a specific role in mind. Contrast that with Wenger, who watches players dozens and dozens of times to appraise exactly how they will fit into his team.

There are concerns that Shevchenko, like Veron, is in the wrong place at the right time; that he was bought on status, this time by an excitable owner with money to burn. At Milan he was drip-fed chances by a phalanx of seductively brilliant midfield craftsmen: Andrea Pirlo, Kaka, Clarence Seedorf, Rui Costa. At Chelsea he is more likely to be feeding off long passes from Frank Lampard and Michael Ballack or scavenging for knockdowns from Didier Drogba. Worse still, he is sometimes being used as the nominal wide-right in a 4-3-3 formation, as grotesque a misuse of a natural predator since Johan Cruyff tried to convert Gary Lineker into a total footballer by dumping him on the right wing at Barcelona in 1988.

5. He's out of form

Simple as that. Like Wayne Rooney, Shevchenko hasn't quite recovered from a pre-World Cup injury and his rust is compounding the inevitable teething problems of moving to a new culture, a new club and a new style of play. This is a man who scored 127 goals in 207 games in Serie A, the most sophisticated defensive institution in world football. Once he finds his form and rhythm, the Premiership should be easy pickings.

6. He's past it

Don't be silly.


link

[misha]

SHEVCHENKO OFFERED HELPING HAND

AC Milan psychologist Bruno de Michelis claims he has spoken with struggling striker Andriy Shevchenko as he tries to make an impact in the Barclays Premiership with Chelsea.

The Ukraine forward has scored just once for the Blues since the Community Shield, in the 2-1 defeat to Middlesbrough back in August, and so far has looked a shadow of the player who prompted big-spending Chelsea to smash their transfer record when completing a £30million-plus deal in the summer.

De Michelis, described as the 'scientific co-ordinator' of the Milan Lab, insists he is happy to help the striker find his feet in his new environment and told The Sun: "I saw him less than two weeks ago. I said I could provide a programme to help him if it is possible.

"He told me 'that would be great'. A champion like Andriy can only be destroyed, not created as he was already a great player before he came to England."

De Michelis believes the change of environment is a key reason behind Shevchenko's slow start.

"How many changes has he faced with the move to London? He needs time and support, otherwise a player becomes introverted, even scared.

"If they start to work with fear inside, it becomes a disaster."

link

[dst]

in The Sun !? (IMG:http://cyrus.medialayer.net/~m1ke/milanfan.com/forums/style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif)

[Rossoneri7]

in The Sun !?  (IMG:http://cyrus.medialayer.net/~m1ke/milanfan.com/forums/style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif)

Found it on goal.com too .. So I guess he cant go f@ck himself after all (IMG:http://cyrus.medialayer.net/~m1ke/milanfan.com/forums/style_emoticons/default/unsure.gif)

[golfaspeed]

Wow...i have lost respect for this forum...sheva IS a past ACMilan player and this topic should be in the players forum. Two thumbs down to the loser that moved this topic. The club still respects and recognizes what sheva has done for milan. Even when hes struggling the club offers their support. That shows how much "CLASS" milan has. Too bad you cant say the same for the posers in this forum tho.