Returning to West Ham’s first-team after spending the last nine months recovering from an Achilles tendon rupture, Andriy Yarmolenko is once again a happy man.
The winger played for 71 minutes against Norwich last weekend, scoring the second in a 2-0 win, and celebrated his goal by immediately running towards the Hammers’ medical team as a thank you for their work in helping him get back on a football pitch as swiftly as possible.
Yarmolenko’s tribute didn’t go unnoticed in his home country, as Sport in Ukraine asked him about it during an interview on Friday after he returned to his national team’s setup for the next two fixtures against Lithuania and Nigeria.
He said: “That was definitely one of the most important goals of my career. In importance, it can be compared to the first goal I scored against Vorskla. I waited a very long time to return to the field and a lot of effort was put into scoring this goal.
“When I was recovering, I promised the guys who helped me all this time I would celebrate the first goal with them. I kept my word, and many thanks to the medical staff for the way they treated, nursed and supported me in every way”.
The forward explained the hardest thing for him during the nine months was ‘to live without the feeling of going out twice a week onto the pitch’, but revealed he got support from everyone at West Ham, whether it be the staff or his teammates, which helped.
He continued: “Some wrote to me, some called. Mark Noble came to the hospital after the operation. Every day, the guys asked how I was, if I needed anything or how they could help me.”
With that difficult time now behind him, Yarmolenko is still trying to get back to full fitness and has yet to play 90 minutes this season.
That could change over the next few days if Andriy Shevchenko decides to play him for that long for Ukraine, but it remains to be seen if that’s something West Ham will want at this stage as the last thing they need is for their winger getting injured again.
