Friday, April 3

Tracking down £62m Mudryk in exile. Plus: Why Barcelona Femeni dominate Real Madrid


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Hello! Ever wonder what happened to Mykhailo Mudryk? The Athletic went looking for the Chelsea forward — and found him.

Coming up:

Mudryk Mystery: Tracking Chelsea’s £62m forward after provisional doping ban

I’m being semi-serious when I ask if you remember who Mykhailo Mudryk is. Rarely in all the years of professional football can somebody with a price tag of £62million ($82m) have dropped off the radar quite so spectacularly.

And even if you can visualise Mudryk, you must be wondering where he is. The Ukraine international midfielder, signed by Chelsea in 2023, hasn’t been seen in their colours for 16 months. He’s stuck in the long grass of an incomplete doping inquiry. The last time he kicked a ball in anger was November 2024, a lifetime ago in Premier League terms.

Mudryk, now 25, was a poster boy for the blueprint of Chelsea’s owners, BlueCo, when he joined the club from Shakhtar Donetsk. He was young, he had promise — and the mammoth eight-and-a-half year contract Chelsea tied him to was the start of the trend of long, long deals at Stamford Bridge. Three years into that agreement, he has barely cleared 50 Premier League appearances.

He was suspended from football in December 2024 after a routine drug test returned an “adverse finding”. In June 2025, England’s Football Association charged him with violating its anti-doping rules — since which point, almost nothing more has been said about him.

To comply with his provisional ban, Mudryk is required to train away from Chelsea — and this week, The Athletic’s Liam Twomey tracked him down to Uxbridge FC, a non-League team in west London, 15 miles from Stamford Bridge. It was a quiet, modest, and lonely setting for a multi-million-pound footballer who is out on a limb and trapped in the wilderness.

Unclear future

Mudryk denies deliberately doping and says he never knowingly used any banned substances or broke any rules. If found guilty by the FA, he’d face a maximum ban of four years. So far, he has missed one full Premier League season and Chelsea’s Club World Cup win last summer. Had Ukraine qualified for the World Cup — they lost to Sweden in the semi-finals of the UEFA play-offs last week — he would likely have watched that from afar, too.

His isolated training sessions at Uxbridge are an attempt to keep himself fit in the meantime. Liam watched Mudryk and two coaches run through drills aimed at keeping him in some sort of shape for the day when his career gets going again. If Mudryk was found not guilty by the FA, he would be free to resume playing immediately.

Precisely when a verdict will come is impossible to say. None of the parties involved have given any guidance about the status of his doping case, nor indicated a timeline for its resolution. Mudryk is one of Chelsea’s most expensive signings ever, and he is Ukrainian football’s biggest name — but for now he’s the equivalent of an athlete who doesn’t exist.

News round-up

  • Italian Football Federation president Gabriele Gravina quit yesterday after yet another failure to qualify for the World Cup. We’re waiting to see if Italy head coach Gennaro Gattuso follows him out of the door.
  • It’s little over a month since he bought into Spanish side Almeria but already, Cristiano Ronaldo is finding out about club ownership. His team and Brazil’s Flamengo are involved in a messy transfer dispute, and some inside Almeria think Flamengo are using Ronaldo’s presence as a shareholder to draw more publicity to the affair.
  • New Tottenham Hotspur head coach Roberto De Zerbi has spoken about his public displays of support for forward Mason Greenwood when they were together at Marseille, saying he is “sorry if I offended anyone’s feelings with this subject matter”. His appointment was criticised by sections of Spurs’ fanbase, who objected to him backing Greenwood so heavily.
  • Everton want to keep England international Jack Grealish beyond his season-long loan from Manchester City. The problem is that they’re not overly keen on stumping up the full £50m purchase option agreed with City.
  • Bayern Munich are crossing fingers that Harry Kane will be fit for the start of their Champions League tie against Real Madrid on Tuesday, but an ankle injury has ruled the forward out of tomorrow’s Bundesliga clash with Freiburg. Alphonso Davies has recovered from a hamstring strain, though.

No Clasico: Why Barcelona Femeni continue to humble Real Madrid 

The protagonists in the men’s version of Spain’s El Clasico go at it hammer and tongs, with dominance swinging this way and that. In the women’s game, however, Barcelona consistently leave Real Madrid trailing miles behind.

The reason for that is Madrid were late to the party. Their women’s team have been operating for less than a decade, and there’s a famous story of president Florentino Perez being given a message on a napkin in 2013 which warned him that no serious club should be operating with a male squad alone. Even then, concerted action was slow.

On the women’s front, here’s the imbalance in black and white: Barcelona: 10 domestic league titles, Madrid: none. Barcelona: three Champions League titles, Madrid: none. Barcelona: 11 Copa de la Reina wins, Madrid: none. You get the picture.

And just to further the point, Barca gave Madrid a tonking in the Champions League quarter-finals yesterday, winning 6-0 at home on the night and 12-2 on aggregate. Alexia Putellas, above, scored the opener on her 500th club appearance (she’s played more games for Barca than Madrid have contested as a team full stop). The tie was over after the first leg but the Catalonian powerhouse turned the screw regardless. Mind the gap.

Blue boy: As peers thrive, Terry still unable to land top head coach job

Photo: Getty Images; design: Eamonn Dalton

Frank Lampard, a former Chelsea team-mate of John Terry’s, is four wins from taking Coventry City into the Premier League from the Championship. Michael Carrick, who played with Terry for England, is much the same distance from taking Manchester United back into the Champions League.

Prominent players from the turn-of-the-century era (Lampard retired in 2017 and Carrick a year later) have made it in coaching, but Terry can’t catch a break. One of the most successful players England has produced in modern times is desperate for a prominent manager’s job — but consistently fails to make the cut.

Terry has had spells as an assistant at Aston Villa and Leicester City, but for now, he’s reduced to a part-time, and slightly vague, mentoring role with Chelsea’s youth academy. He moaned publicly when Chelsea put a caretaker team together after parting company with head coach Enzo Maresca in January, but left him out of it. It’s not as if Terry doesn’t have the requisite coaching badges.

So what’s the issue with a former Premier League, FA Cup, League Cup, Champions League and Europa League winner? Well, it’s fair to say, as Danny Taylor and Gregg Evans write here, that Terry’s history is chequered in parts. Only last month, he courted controversy with some of his social media activity. How much that counts against him is moot, but the juxtaposition of him grasping for a chance while an old contemporary in Lampard kicks on is really very striking — and showing no sign of ending soon.

Around TAFC: Can USMNT make public care at World Cup?

John Dorton / ISI Photos / USSF

  • Confidence in the USMNT’s World Cup chances come the summer hasn’t been helped by losses to Belgium and Portugal by a combined score of 7-2 in this international break. Paul Tenorio is hoping the co-hosts’ performances at the finals can keep the American public invested in them.
  • Earlier in the week, we explained how Newcastle United’s owners had, in effect, sold the club’s St James’ Park stadium to themselves. It’s not the first case of a Premier League outfit using bricks and mortar to keep their accounts in order. Chris Weatherspoon is rightly asking: isn’t this proof that football’s financial model is broken?
  • James Rodriguez required hospital treatment for “severe dehydration” after Colombia’s recent friendlies against Croatia and France. He’s recovering positively but it doesn’t bode well for the high temperatures we’re expecting at the World Cup. He’ll need to make the most of FIFA’s cooling breaks.
  • Not many players at the World Cup will carry the weight of a nation more heavily than Manchester City’s Abdukodir Khusanov. He’s an icon in Uzbekistan, with his face plastered all over billboards in the capital, Tashkent. No pressure, then.
  • Our Premier League Hope-o-meter is always a good laugh. Chelsea fans have thrown the towel in. Tottenham followers don’t like their chances either. And Liverpool supporters have just about had enough. Smile like you mean it.
  • Most clicked in Thursday’s TAFC: our somewhat contentious World Cup team rankings.

Catch a match

Selected games (times ET/UK)

Friday Championship — Middlesbrough vs Millwall, 7.30am/12.30pm — CBS, Paramount+, Amazon Prime/ITV, Sky Sports; Coventry City vs Derby County, 3pm/8pm — CBS, Paramount+, Amazon Prime/Sky Sports; Ligue 1: Paris Saint-Germain vs Toulouse, 2.45pm/7.45pm —  beIN Sports, Fanatiz, Fubo/Amazon Prime.

Saturday FA Cup quarter-finals — Manchester City vs Liverpool, 7.45am/12.45pm — ESPN, Fubo/TNT Sports; Chelsea vs Port Vale, 12.15pm/5.15pm; Southampton vs Arsenal, 3pm/8pm — both ESPN/BBC, TNT Sports; La Liga: Mallorca vs Real Madrid, 10.15am/3.15pm — ESPN, Fubo/LaLiga TV; Atletico Madrid vs Barcelona, 3pm/8pm — ESPN, Fubo/Disney+; German Bundesliga: Freiburg vs Bayern Munich, 9.30am/2.30pm — ESPN (U.S. only); MLS: Inter Miami vs Austin, 7.30pm/12.30am; San Jose vs San Diego, 10.30pm/3.30am — both Apple TV in both regions.

Sunday FA Cup quarter-final — West Ham United vs Leeds United, 11.30am/4.30pm — ESPN, Fubo/TNT Sports; Serie A: Inter vs Roma, 2.45pm/7.45pm — Paramount+, Fubo, DAZN/TNT Sports, DAZN; Ligue 1: Monaco vs Marseille, 2.45pm/7.45pm — beIN Sports, Fanatiz, Fubo/Amazon Prime.

And finally…

The doors to Inter Miami’s new stadium open this weekend when they host Austin in MLS. It broke ground in August 2023, it will hold just under 27,000 fans, it has a stand named after Lionel Messi — and when the punters walk in tomorrow, this, above, is what they’ll see…





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