Andriy the Icon: Ukraine's Greatest Football Hero is Back on the Big Stage

Given the fame and adulation afforded to footballers all across the world, it's surprisingly rare for a player to become a fully-fledged national icon. To transcend the sphere of sport and be canonised forever in popular culture – a la Maradona, Cruyff, Hagi or Weah – is a privilege only granted to a select few.

In the modern era, in fact, there are perhaps only three players who make the cut. Two are Zinedine Zidane and Didier Drogba; the other will spend Thursday evening in Ukraine's dugout, going about his new job as assistant coach with the diligence and discretion that endeared him to a nation in the first place. It is, of course, Andriy Shevchenko.

As a player, Shevchenko won 18 major trophies, one Ballon d'Or and a list of individual honours that could fill a Russian novel. He also, in the words on one profiler, "replaced the 19th-century nationalist poet Taras Shevchenko as the icon of Ukraine". He is now his country's assistant coach, back in football after a bizarre four­-year hiatus that encompassed doomed stints as fringe politician and pro golfer, as well as turning down the biggest job in Ukrainian football – the one of his current boss.

The low-key role of assistant coach is in some ways apt for Shevchenko, who during his playing days was perhaps the most inconspicuous superstar sportsman there's ever been. Shevchenko the player was a curious mix of contradictions: on the one hand a figure of unparalleled reverence in his homeland and a hero in Milan; a man who was personally headhunted to the Kings Road by Roman Abramovich; a megastar athlete with a supermodel wife and who counted Giorgio Armani as a close friend. In short, he couldn't have been much more showbiz if he tried.

And yet to watch him play was to see a hard-working, no-frills footballer with none of the preening entitlement or theatrical stroppiness of his peers. Despite being a product of the Beckham era, when elite footballer and celebrity became one and the same, Shevchenko was marked for his humility and consummate professionalism. He was an absurdly talented forward, an unerringly lethal finisher whenever a chance presented itself, but also an economical player who was as notable for industrious teamwork as individualist magic.

But then nothing ever came easy to Shevchenko. Aged nine, he was evacuated from his home town in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster, taking up football only under instruction from his father, a captain in the Red Army tank regiment, who wanted his son to get fit in order to follow in his footsteps. As it turned out, he was pretty decent at this new lark. Soon Dynamo Kyiv came calling, and so begun the career of the greatest player to emerge from the post-Soviet states.

This origin story – of overcoming a nation-defining disaster to reach international stardom – is fundamental to his iconic status within Ukraine's national psyche. "Shevchenko is worshipped in Ukraine," says the European football writer Michael Yokhin. "He is thought of as a true great".

It's easy to see why. In adulthood he's set up a foundation to help children in need and orphans. Even his time in England, a dispiriting two years mired by injury and internal politicking, bore the hallmarks of a good-egg personality. "It was very hard," said Shevchenko of his time in west London. "But I really enjoyed the fans – I tell you, the Chelsea fans were fantastic." The feeling's mutual, too: the striker is still recalled fondly at Stamford Bridge – and not, with all due respect, because he was much good. Rather, despite being the owner's personal vanity signing, he went about his work with the sort of unfussy diligence that's not always expected from an exorbitantly priced superstar.

And if there was ever any doubts over his near-universal popularity, they were vanquished by the outbreak of delight from football fans of all nations and allegiances that met his brace in Euro 2012 – the brace that, as it turned out, would be the final goals of his career.

For the striker – then a 35-year-old on his career's final downslope who had battled injury to make the squad for the tournament, his country's first ever as host nation, by the skin of his teeth – simply getting onto the pitch would have been a success story. To register two quickfire bullet headers to reverse a 1-0 deficit, and to do it in the stadium where he had been employed both as ballboy and centre-forward on his journey to the top, made for one of those moments that had every watching fan on their feet and applauding.

Ukraine didn't make it beyond the group stages in the end, and no sooner had the tournament concluded than Shevchenko had announced his retirement from playing in order to pursue a career in politics with the Ukraine Forward party. Whether the move was one borne of his own ideals or of the party's need for publicity remains ambiguous – it's not uncommon in Ukraine for celebrities to be roped into politics – but its lowly showing at the October 2012 elections seemed to spell the end for the affiliation.

(Nor was it the first time Shevchenko had dipped his toe unsuccessfully into the world of politics: back in 2004, his public backing of Viktor Yanukovych amid a presidential election marred by whispers of serious foul play, resulted in the Kyiv fans raising a banner that read, "Your choice made the nation weep" – the sole instance of popular disagreement in an otherwise crowd-pleasing career.)

Before his fleeting political exploits, and in the immediate aftermath of his swansong at Euro 2012, Shevchenko was offered the job of coaching the national team. To most people's surprise, not least the Ukrainian FA, he declined, preferring not to be fast-tracked to the top and clearing the path for journeyman coach Fomenko to take up the role instead ("A very uninspiring appointment," says Yokhin).

Despite this initial refusal, though, it's difficult to escape the sense that Shevchenko's eventual taking on the role is written in the stars – a sense that his recruitment to the backroom staff in February only reaffirmed.

The idea of Shevchenko as Ukraine's manager-in-waiting doesn't simply spring from the romantic dreams of misty-eyed fans; there may be a degree of realpolitik at work, too. "Shevchenko has got himself in a very good situation," says Yokhin. "His role is fairly vague, so he is not seen as directly responsible for anything, but will get a lot of positive press because of who he is. If the team does well at the Euros, success will be attributed to him. If the team fails, Fomenko will be the natural scapegoat. [Shevchenko] can't lose.

"If everything goes well, Sheva could easily replace Fomenko after the Euros. Many people believe that is the plan."

And as Shevchenko reminded us on his unveiling, he played under some genuine managerial legends. "I worked with great coaches like Valeriy Lobanovskyi, Carlo Ancelotti, Jose Mourinho and got a huge experience."

Or to put it another way, one tactical revolutionary, one master diplomat and one belligerent medal-machine, all of them among the most accomplished trophy-hoarders to have set foot in a dugout. You'd imagine, then, that Shevchenko might be able to make his way in management better than most.

Of the three, Lobanovskyi bore the biggest influence on Shevchenko's playing career. "He was a great man and a great coach. He did a lot for me. He taught me the need to be patient, he instilled the culture of work in me and the importance of respecting your adversary," he has said of the man who oversaw his spectacular rise to stardom in the Dynamo Kyiv side of the late-1990s (stamping out the young Sheva's 40-a-day habit in the process), and indeed whose pioneering pressing game two decades earlier laid the foundation for much of today's tactical frameworks.

Lobanovskyi – also an outlandishly talented attacker in his playing days – died following a stroke in 2002 and a year later Shevchenko, having dispatched the penalty to win AC Milan the European Cup, brought the trophy to his old manager's resting place, and placed his winner's medal on Lobanovskyi's grave.

"The father and the god of Ukrainian football," were the striker's words at the time. Although these days, not everyone would agree. While Lobanovskyi remains the father, there's now a generation of Ukrainian fans for whom Shevchenko has displaced his old boss in the role of god.

Shevchenko has emulated his old mentor on the pitch and in the public imagination. Whether he can extend the parallels to the dugout remains to be seen. For now, though, he'll simply do what he's always done: get on with his job with minimum fuss, and wait for the chance to present itself.

@A_Hess