Taras Stepanenko was 17 when he made his professional debut for Metalurh Zaporizhzhya, in a 3-1 defeat by Dynamo Kyiv. He was a fine passer of the ball who almost from the beginning read the game with the assurance of a player several years his senior. Great things were expected of him and he seemed on track when he moved to Shakhtar just before his 21st birthday.
Twelve years on, though, Stepanenko is still at Shakhtar at the age of 32. He may have won seven Ukrainian Premier League titles and seven Ukrainian Cups but there is a sense of a talent that never quite delivered on its potential. He’s played only 262 minutes in the knockout stage of the Champions League, completed only two knockout matches in the competition, and one of those was a 7-0 defeat to Bayern Munich in 2015.
