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| | FIFA.com The Official web site of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association |
 | | Andriy's early years had not gone quite so smoothly, for at the age of nine, this lad from Dvirkivshchyna, not far from Tchernobyl, was one of thousands of local children forced to flee to the coast with their families to avoid the horrendous after-effects of the nuclear power plant disaster. |
 | | On a sporting level too, the path to glory was fraught with major obstacles, as in the same year of 1986, he failed a trial for entry to a specialist sports school after making a hash of a dribbling test. |
 | | It was at another youth tournament in 1990, when Shevchenko was just 14 years old, that the legendary Welsh striker Ian Rush, breaking goalscoring records for Liverpool at the time, offered him a pair of football boots as reward for his uncanny eye for goal. |
| fifa.com /en/mens/awards/gala/0,2418,104455,00.html?articleid=104455 (876 words) |
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