The former goalkeeper of the football teams “Dnipro” (Dnipro) and “Viktoria” (Sumy) Denys Shelikhov signed a contract with the Belarusian club “Slavia-Mozyr”, but for this he had to resort to a non-standard way – to swim across the Tisza River. About this incident informs edition of Sport-express.ua in the material entitled “The Scandalous History of Ex-Worator Dnipro Shelikhov”.
According to information, Shelikhov illegally crossed the state border of Ukraine, using the Tisza River as an escape route. He carefully prepared for this for several months, practicing swimming with flippers. During these training sessions, the goalkeeper visited the river several times to prepare for the dangerous swim.
Despite all attempts by Ukrainian journalists to contact the football player, Shelikhov avoided contact after learning that he was being sought by the Ukrainian mass media. At the same time, in Belarus, he gave an interview to the press service of his new club. Journalists from Ukraine decided to pose as representatives of the Belarusian media in order to get a comment from the goalkeeper.
In a conversation with journalists, Shelikhov never acknowledged the war in Ukraine, and also refused to call Russia an aggressor. He stated that in a week Ukraine will forget about his act and will not see anything special in it.
When journalists tried to ask about his method of crossing the border and how he got to Belarus, Shelikhov expressed indignation:
“Who are you, a prosecutor? To ask such questions. Ask the border guard. You are nobody to me to ask such questions! There are a lot of football topics in Ukraine: children’s football, corruption, fields, security and a lot of other things, and you ask such questions Read my biography to begin with: where was I born and where did I play last year?, – said Shelikhov.
After this conversation, Shelikhov added the journalist to the “black list”, terminating further contact.
Denys Shelikhov used to be the main goalkeeper in Dnipro. In January 2024, he left the team as a free agent. During his career, he also played for Volyn, Belarusian Luch and Isloch, Mykolaiv, VPC-Agro, Metalist 1925 and LNZ.
