“It was an incredible, emotional moment for me to spend time with her,” Andriy Shevchenko says as he describes meeting a little Ukrainian girl called Maryna last month. The most famous former footballer from Ukraine, who won the Ballon d’Or in 2004 and the Champions League with Milan before he also coached his country at Euro 2020, pauses as he reflects on a simple encounter where he kicked a football back and forth in hospital with the six-year-old.
The images of their kickaround assume a grainy resonance when it is explained that Maryna had become the first child in Ukraine to…
