Artem Dovbyk

Written by Oleksandr Sazhko and Oleksandr Sereda for Ua.tribuna.com:

Artem Dovbyk emerged as the surprise package of the La Liga season after joining Girona for just €8m. Has netted an impressive 20 goals in the league at the time of writing, putting himself among the top scorers and becoming one of the hottest properties on the transfer market. Dovbyk’s breakthrough moment came at Euro 2020. In the round of 16 clash against Sweden, the little-known striker came on in extra time and led Ukraine to the quarter-finals with a late goal. As a child, Dovbyk almost gave up football, according to his youth coach Serhiy Kovalevych: “Artem came to the academy and got into the 1996 group, even though he was born in 1997. It didn't work out for him there, the coaches were unprofessional. One day, Artem decided to quit football altogether, like all the children in that group, because of a conflict between the players and the coach. It took me a lot of effort to convince Dovbyk's father and Artem himself so that he would continue training.”