Despite his lack of game time this season under Sean Dyche at Everton, Vitaliy Mykolenko remains a starter for Ukraine at left-back.
He was there against England and kept his spot against Italy, where he endured an evening to forget at the hands of Nicolo Zaniolo.
That’s what Gazzetta dello Sport explain in their rating for the Everton defender, giving him a 5/10, simply starting off that he was ‘very bad’.
He wasn’t quite the worst on his team in their eyes, as that award, if you want to call it that, was reserved for Georgiy Sudakov, but they didn’t mince their words about Mykolenko either.
They quite happily report that the Everton left-back was ‘tortured’ by Zaniolo until the moment the playmaker was subbed off, while his ‘interventions were also disorganised’.
Mykolenko picked up a yellow card in the 38th minute and Gazzetta also believe he was ‘lucky’ when his foul on Riccardo Orsolini in the box wasn’t picked up, which would have led to a penalty for Italy.Gazzetta have a separate bit about that incident in the newspaper as well, explaining that the referee slipped up regarding the incident, which happened just after the 90th minute.
Orsolini is described as being ‘swept away’ by the Everton player’s tackle, as he took out ‘the player and not the ball’.
In fact, the belief is it would have ‘been fair’ to give a penalty, and it was the only blip on an otherwise good performance by the Spanish referee.
