A middle aged man dressed in a training suit sits in a chair in the middle of a hall with his knees open up wide. It's not that he mistook a theater for a gym. Andriy Shevchenko, the biggest treasure of Ukrainian football, is simply trying to record a greeting for the 2012 Ukrainian Football Federation jubilee celebrations. Unfortunately for him, words are not as easy for him to master as a football.
Leaked recently, the video shows Shevchenko as a rather different character than
the nation saw just a year ago, when he was running for parliament at the helm
of a political force, Ukraine Forward! that had a realistic chance to clear the
5 percent threshold and win seats. In the end it did not.
“I’m
glad… I’m glad… I’m glad to greet all the guests from celebrating… I’m glad to
greet…,” the sport star mumbles, than waves his hand in an act of surrender and
reaches out for the script.
Shevchenko,
36, is the most prominent forward of the
national team and multiple award winner. He is also known for his glorious
performances in Dynamo Kyiv, A.C. Milan and Chelsea F.C. But put him in front
of the camera, and the luster is lost.
“Just
give me a little time,” he says to the camera crew defensively.
It
was obvious how much he was strained by the attempt to make a video address. In
just a few minutes Shevchenko stutters, forgets his lines and messes up nearly
every verb. A sequence of near synonyms becomes a trap for the man, and
stringing “prosperity” and “luck” together becomes a hopeless task.
Shevchenko
could never have become the public speaker he would need to be to successfully serve
the nation as an effective parliament member. In fact, watching him painfully
struggle with a few lines makes the observers wonder how he managed to speak at
a few gatherings during his political campaign last fall.
Shevchenko
is not the first politician in Ukraine’s history to be pitied and ridiculed for
leaked back stage videos. In 2009, a video was leaked of Yulia Tymoshenko
attempting to record an address to the nation. She famously exclaimes
“Everything is lost!” into the TV screen. Apparently, Tymoshenko meant that her
teleprompter has gone blank, but the video went viral and became a meme.
In 2010, a
video of head of Kharkiv regional administration Mikhail Dobkin attempting to
record an address for his election campaign created more memes than possibly
any other leaked videos in Ukraine. The footage captured his foul-mouthed exchange with
Gennadiy Kernes, acting mayor of Kharkiv at the time.
”The text
is written in a moronic way,” says Dobkin to the camera, addressing the phrase to
Kernes who talks on the background.
“Misha, you have a sour face, nobody will give you money!” Kernes replies.
