Vitalii Mykolenko is helping new Chelsea signing Mykhaylo Mudryk settle in to life in the Premier League and the UK.
The 23-year-old's Ukraine teammate moved to London in the January transfer window and made his debut on Merseyside - in his new club's draw with Liverpool. He was a target for the Blues in the summer but Everton's late transfer window interest was rebuffed by then club Shakhtar Donetsk.
Mykolenko is helping him adapt to life in the UK following his own experience, which has seen him settle quickly on Merseyside, though not without a few teething problems.
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Mykolenko revealed he is supporting Mudryk in an interview with the Everton website in which he opened up on the harrowing experience of his family back in Ukraine. His dad signed up to the military effort to defend their homeland and there have been times when he has been cut off from contact for fear messages might be intercepted by Russian intelligence officers.
The Blues left-back also explained that he is helping fellow countrymen Mudryk and Illya Zabarnyi, who joined Bournemouth last month from Mykolenko's former club Dynamo Kyiv. Among his tips has been to use Netflix to pick up the language - though that only took him so far, he acknowledged.
He said: “[The language] was a big problem for me. It still is to a certain degree because everyone has different accents here and it’s not so easy to understand everyone perfectly but it’s getting better all of the time. The Scouse accent? Woah. It’s the same in the east of Ukraine. I am Ukrainian, I can speak in Ukrainian and Russian but when I go to the east of Ukraine the accent is so strong and they have different words for things... It’s similar in Scouse.
“The main way I’ve improved, as well as being around my teammates, is by watching Netflix. I try to watch in English as much as I can but if I’m tired, I’ll watch in Ukrainian with English subtitles. When I do that, I find myself reading the English more than watching the shows, so that’s helped me a lot."
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