In that marvelous football machine that was Vujadin Boskov’s Sampdoria in the 1990/91 season, Ukrainian midfielder Oleksij Mychajlycenko was far from being the most prominent name.
The Blucerchiati could already feature an impressive squad boasting the names of Gianluca Pagliuca, Roberto Mancini, Gianluca Vialli, and Marco Branca – just to name a few.
Still, the Dynamo Kyiv veteran, who landed in Genoa in the summer, was supposed to be the cherry on the top of a roster that was getting ready to mount their first real challenge to the Scudetto.
But Mychajlycenko was held back by several reasons, including injuries, language barrier, and a somewhat strong feeling of nostalgia for his homeland, so much that he left Boskov’s court after just one season.
The game he played on November 11, 1990, thus remains one of his few remarkable performance as a Blucerchiato. Mychajlycenko scored Sampdoria’s first goal in a 4-2 win over Pisa and was instrumental in a victory that kept the Genoan side top of the table.
For the record, the other Sampdoria goals were scored by Mancini, Vialli and Branca, while Lamberto Piovanelli’s late brace made the defeat a little less bitter for a Pisa side whose roster included a 20-year-old Diego Simeone (even though El Cholo didn’t play that game).
It was the last time that Sampdoria and Pisa faced each other at the Luigi Ferraris Stadium as the Tuscans were relegated at the end of the season and have never been back to Serie A since then.
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