Humble Euro 2020 Ukraine ace Zinchenko ‘nicest man you’ll meet’ on supermarket trips with WAG Vlada, reveals worker
ALEX ZINCHENKO stands patiently in line, shopping basket at his feet.
Nobody ever looks twice at the slight, blond figure who has become a regular at the supermarket in Hale Barns, Cheshire.
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Other than the odd polite exchange and shy smile at check-out he rarely says a word. He is just another shopper, anonymous in dark blue tracksuit and flip-flops, getting the groceries in.
Zinchenko, 24, is a picture of humility as he shuffles forward in the queue waiting to pay.
Maybe that is because he gets the back-handed compliment from Manchester City supporters as being the club’s least untrustworthy left-back.
Or perhaps it comes from his tough times in the Russian republic of Tatarstan living off handouts from Rubin Kazan team-mates because he was not being paid a wage seven years ago.
Yet he is now the pride of Ukraine and tomorrow will face the Netherlands in Group C as his country’s youngest captain.
Back home he would be mobbed walking down the street.
His superstar status would never allow Zinchenko to enjoy the simple things in life like shopping for bread and milk.
One of the assistants at the supermarket where he sometimes goes accompanied by his wife Vlada Shcheglova said: “You couldn’t meet a nicer young man.
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“He comes and goes and I think he likes it here because nobody either recognises him or bothers him if they do.
“I’m a Blue so it was a big thrill for me when he first started coming into the store.
“He always smiles, is always very polite and the last thing most folk would think of him would be that he’s such a famous footballer.”
Zinchenko wins his 40th cap tomorrow and has become a crucial component of the side run by Ukrainian icon and former Chelsea and AC Milan star Andriy Shevchenko.
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Not as a defender but as a central midfielder — a position City chief Pep Guardiola did not trust him to play.
Indeed while the Spaniard signed him from Russian club FC Ufa for £1.7million the day after he took over in 2016, Zinchenko never really looked to have much of a future at the Etihad. And had he agreed he would have been moved on to Napoli or Wolves.
Yet that shy exterior masks a determination to succeed that led him from his warn-torn home of Donbass in Ukraine to street football in Moscow.
Zinchenko had been the skipper of Shakhtar Donetsk’s youth team but at the age of 17 he was taken to Russia by his mother to escape the conflict.
He played on concrete pitches for a non-league team called Meteor, for despite being seen at Shakhtar as a top prospect, none of the big clubs in the Russian capital were interested in him.
He found himself on trial at Rubin Kazan but his time in Tatarstan was a hand-to-mouth existence.
The young player could not even afford to go shopping for bread and milk.
Former Rubin coach Rinat Bilyaletdinov said: “I really wanted to sign him. But there were legal problems over his contract with Shakhtar so he lived at our training centre but he could not be paid.
“Because he had no salary our players collected money for him just so he would be able to buy himself something in the city.”
By the beginning of 2015 he was at another football outpost with Russian Premier League side Ufa — an 18-hour drive from Moscow.
Yet finally his career was in motion and 18 months later he became Guardiola’s first buy.
Even then he was immediately sent out on loan to PSV.
Yet tomorrow he wears the Ukraine armband having placed in his basket three Prem titles, four League Cup winner’s medals and one FA Cup gong.
Quite a selection of luxury goods for the kid who has made a career out of being patient and waiting in line.
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