Ilya Zabarny became the 11th Ukrainian to play in the elite division of England's championship
Making his debut for «Bournemouth» in a rescheduled home match in the 7th round of the English Premier League against «Brighton» (0:2), Illia Zabarnyi became the 13th Ukrainian to play in the English professional football system and the 11th to appear in the elite division.
Photo by the press service of the UAF
Making his debut for Bournemouth in the postponed home match of the 7th round of the English Premier League against Brighton (0:2), Illia Zabarnyi became the 13th Ukrainian to play in the professional football system in England and the 11th to feature in the elite division.
Pioneers
The first was Sergiy Baltacha, who moved to Ipswich Town in 1988. However, the legendary defender did not get a chance to play at the elite level as his team played in a lower division.
Alexei Cherednyk, on the other hand, who moved from Dnipropetrovsk to Southampton in 1990, got that opportunity. He did play in the old First Division…
Yevtushenko's Breakthrough and Lutsenko's Strength
The first Ukrainian to play in the modern Premier League was defender Oleksandr Yevtushok, who briefly moved from Dnipropetrovsk to Coventry City in 1997.
The next Ukrainian player to make a significant impact in the Premier League was Oleg Lutsenko. In 1999, he transferred from Kyiv's Dynamo to Arsenal. Besides London, the defender also played for Wolverhampton Wanderers in the Premier League.
The Legendary Dynamo Duo and Voronin
Following him, Sergiy Rebrov moved to the Premier League from the same Dynamo Kyiv of Valeriy Lobanovskyi in 2000. In England, he played for two London clubs—Tottenham and West Ham.
Six years later, his partner at Dynamo's attack towards the end of the last century, Andriy Shevchenko, joined Chelsea from AC Milan.
In 2007, Andriy Voronin signed with Liverpool and spent two seasons on their bench (with a loan spell at Hertfordshire).
A New Ukrainian Wave
A new wave of Ukrainian presence in the English Premier League was marked by Oleksandr Zinchenko's debut for Manchester City in 2017. Then came Andriy Yarmolenko's first match for West Ham in 2018, Vitaliy Mykolenko's debut for Everton in 2022, and Mykhailo Mudryk's debut for Chelsea in January 2023.
And finally came Illia Zabarnyi's turn. Let us remember the date of our footballer's Premier League debut with Bournemouth—April 4, 2023.
Let’s also not forget about Yegor Yarmoluk, who moved from Dnipropetrovsk-1 to Brentford last summer and has already made his debut for the Bees in a League Cup match against Gillingham.
