SYDNEY — Chelsea head coach Xabi Alonso has found his attacking stocks unexpectedly boosted just three weeks out from the Premier League season with the surprise return of Mykhailo Mudryk from a doping ban.
Mudryk has not played a competitive match since November 2024 after being provisionally suspended following an “adverse finding” for a banned substance by the Football Association (FA). He was subsequently charged and banned in June 2025.
But the 25-year-old, who became the most expensive Ukrainian player when he signed for Chelsea in 2023, had his maximum four-year ban successfully appealed at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) last month, with Alonso informed of his availability overnight.
“We are happy for him, especially for him, because we are not able to understand what he has been through in this time and how he feels at the moment,” Alonso said on Saturday following their 2-1 friendly loss to Tottenham in Sydney.
“We want that he feels part of the team, because he has not had this for a long time, and that he has the support from everyone: from the club, from the teammates, from the staff.
“To be honest, we were not expecting to have this great news at this moment, so we are very happy learning that he will be here with us.”
Mudryk will join Chelsea for the next leg of their pre-season friendly tour in Hong Kong, with Alonso describing him as a “special player,” having first noticed the young winger shining back at his first professional club, Shakhtar Donetsk.
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But he acknowledged Mudryk’s reintegration with the team could be slow, and with just a short runway until the start of the season, there is little time to bring his body and mind up to speed with the football Alonso hopes to unleash.
“I remember watching him in Shakhtar: the impact he had, how good he is, how good in one-on-one situations, how he could create a lot of situations on his own,” he said. “He’s a special player.
“It’s massive, to go through what he has done. I [know] that frustration not to play what you love to do must be really, really hard. So now, for sure he is so excited, and we want to help him in that and that he feels part of something.
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“Once there’s a change, things will start moving, and for him, it’s a massive change [from] training on his own every day. I mean, I think that had to be really, really hard because he wanted to play football, he wanted to be part of the team, and he was not allowed to do that for such a long time.
“So once this meeting has happened, now we can move on and after we will see if he makes progress quicker or slower. But we need to do the work.”
