ANDn the life of Taras Stepanenko (Dontetks, 08-08-1989) There are non-negotiable things. One is to run. The middle center of the Shakthar and the Ukrainian team spare no effort in the field. Part of that way of understanding his trade has a lot to do with another of the bases that sustain his personality: reading.
StepanenkoSince he was a child, he has not understood life without books. From one of your favorites, Alice in Wonderland, he extracted a phrase that is engraved in his head. It belongs to the moment when the Red Queen explains to Alice at the speed of their worlds: “To stay where you are you have to run as fast as you can. If you want to go somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast.” That phrase shocked the captain of the Shakhtar.
In this modern football, many players would have engraved that phrase or a summary of it on their skin. Stepanenko, no. Because those are other laws that mark his path. For him, tattoos are an offense to God, a pagan symbol. Deeply Christian, like one of his younger teammates, Mudryk respects that the Brazilians on his team have their bodies full of tattoos of religious symbols and the names of their loved ones. He is clear that no mark on his body will deepen his beliefs or feel closer to a family that is gold for him. Being a father is for Taras one of the best gifts that life has given him.
Biographies abound in his library. He has them of great sportsmen (Ibrahimovic, Jordan, Ferguson …) and that of the great characters of history (Napoleon, Caesar, Alexander the Great …). Novels cost him more. More than once he has faced Don Quixote, but he has stayed by the wayside. Among the readings of biographies that feed his home library are those of Ancelotti and Pep Guardiola, for him two models of how to manage the wardrobe-winning binomial.
At 32 years old, Stepanenko faces his eleventh season in the club of his city, although his training was in the Metalurh Zaporizhzhia. On May 11, 2011 he signed for the mining team, with which he has since won 21 titles, seven of each of those who play in Ukraine: League, Cup and Super Cup.
Louis de Funes and Master Chef
The hard-cut, strong-legged midfielder who comes out in every game is a person in love with Paris and French culture. He grew up with the movies of Louis de Funes and preserves in his memory the adventures dressed as a gendarme of the actor born in Courbevoie in 1914. Mediterranean gastronomy is another of the passions in the house of the Stepanenko. His wife, Margarita, was one of the students with the best performance in Héctor Jiménez’s stoves. It is about a Colombian cook, with a Canadian and Ukrainian passport that the Ukraine has become a very popular character being the face of Master Chef Ukraine.
That also has its ‘tough’ side. Because sweets are for Taras Stepanenko a weakness since childhood. He does not care about the origin: the German strudel, the Italian panacotta, the Ukrainian solozhenik … It was not easy for him to combine that sin with the diet required by a first-rate team. For what he does not have too many problems is eating pasta.
In his career, he needs to take a step outside of Ukraine. Some European club knocked on his door, but he never took the step. The Shakhtar it is his life. As is the Ukrainian team, with which he has 67 games with which he fights to reach Qatar, which would be his first World Cup. He does it together with Andriy Yarmolenko. Together they appeared at a press conference after threats were crossed in which the atmosphere in the national team was compromised. It was after a classic Dynamo Kiev-Shakhtar in which Yarmolenko was about to break his leg. “Our friendship ends here,” Stepanenko said. Months later they fixed it.
