Wembley becomes shop window
Shevchenko and Voronin will be out to show Premier League what it's missing
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Your support makes all the difference.Ukraine will have two strikers in action tonight who had their reputations dented by spells in England but their coach, Alexi Mikhailichenko, is urging Andrei Shevchenko and Andrei Voronin not to use the World Cup qualifier to try to prove their Premier league clubs were wrong to release them. Shevchenko has returned on loan to Milan after a largely unsuccessful stint at Chelsea, while Voronin is scoring goals at Hertha Berlin after failing at Liverpool. Mikhailichenko said the duo should be more focused on getting a good result for the team than on shining individually when they line up at Wembley tonight hoping to end England's perfect start to qualifying and push Ukraine closer in the standings.
"I feel that it would be a mistake for any player to try and start the game hoping they can prove some experts wrong and show them he is better than they think," Mikhailichenko said. "It's a very wrong approach. He has to show that to himself."
Mikhailichenko said he would use the strikers' experience of Premier League football to give him an insight into the tactics of England players who have won all four Group Six games to open up a five-point lead. "The experience of both Shevchenko and Voronin will definitely help because they spent such a long time understanding the atmosphere of English football," Mikhailichenko said. "They know so many players and trained with them and you learn much more from that compared with watching on TV."
Shevchenko, who scored freely in his first spell with Milan, rarely started for Chelsea and was eventually loaned back to the Serie A club. Voronin was moved on to Hertha Berlin on loan after scoring five goals in 19 league games for Liverpool and is scoring regularly in the Bundesliga but he is eager for a return to Anfield.
"I would love to come back to Liverpool, not as No 5 or 6 or to sit on the bench or to watch the match," he said. "I would like to come back to play. There are certain offers, I'm going to discuss them and take it from there. I don't think I was given a fair chance. If it were not for the transfer of Robbie Keane, I think I could have shown much more of what I was capable of. I also had three months of injury with a hamstring tear. With that sort of injury you need time to recover and have to start proving yourself again."
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