Inside Mykhailo Mudryk’s year from hell since his failed drugs test

First, a confession. May 27, 2025, the day before Chelsea versus Real Betis in the Conference League final. I’d heard a rumour that Mykhailo Mudryk was in town and, not only that, he was at an American steakhouse called Whiskey in the Jar in the city centre of Wroclaw, Poland.

He’d been neither seen nor heard for months due to his suspension from football for failing a drugs test and this busy restaurant was only a 10-minute walk away, so I swung by.

Couldn’t see him. Asked a waiter. Said he was here, wearing a black Chelsea gilet and a durag, but that he’d been and gone. Bugger. There goes that exclusive. Best make my way to the Tarczynski Arena for Enzo Maresca’s press conference, I guess.

It was only later I learned Mudryk was, in fact, there the entire time. Sitting inside, out of sight, in a booth in which his privacy was presumably boosted by the patrons’ eyes being more focused on the decor, which included a skeleton riding a Harley-Davidson hanging from the ceiling.

So, it was steak for Mudryk, egg on face for myself, and, you hope, a handsome tip for that polite waiter with the poker face serving sides of subterfuge and dollops of what-might-have-been.

We did not expect to see Mudryk in Wroclaw. Neither did Maresca. When asked on the suspended Ukrainian suddenly turning up in Poland at his press conference, Chelsea’s head coach was confused. ‘To be honest, I just… I don’t know,’ Maresca said. ‘He is here or is he coming? He’s here? I don’t know. I’m happy for Misha to be here.’ 

Chelsea won 4-1 the next night, and Mudryk received a winner’s medal when he joined their celebratory afterparty.

That was due to his earlier participation in Europe’s third-tier competition. Indeed, it was in the Conference League where we last saw Mudryk on a football pitch – a year ago this week.

It has been a long and frankly sad year. A year of waste. A year of silence. A hellish year according to those who know and feel for Mudryk. He scored in a 2-0 win at Heidenheim on November 28, 2024, was an unused substitute in a 3-0 victory over Aston Villa in the Premier League a few days later, and then disappeared from Chelsea’s training sessions and games.

At the time, those covering Chelsea were told it was due to illness, but Daily Mail Sport received a tip that an alleged anti-doping issue was the real reason for his absence. Suspecting something other than a curiously lengthy case of the flu was indeed afoot, we got to work trying to verify it.

From Chelsea, who were away in Kazakhstan for a Conference League game with Astana, to Mudryk’s representatives on behalf of the ProStar Football Agency, nobody official was willing to stand it up. We had it unofficially second- and third-sourced in the meantime, but still craved something concrete. A statement, ideally, for use in the story on his provisional suspension.

Then lawyers used by several sporting stars caught up in similar sagas – including Paul Pogba – sent us a legal letter explaining how they had been instructed by Mudryk.

They warned us not to publish our piece as, among other things, it infringed his privacy rights. We asked them to confirm or deny that Mudryk had provided an adverse analytical finding, and was now temporarily suspended from football. We received no comment. 

We told them we had learned that further tips were landing in the inboxes of other Chelsea correspondents. No comment. We warned this news was bound to be broken, one way or another, if not by us then another organisation. No comment.

The story then broke overnight in Ukrainian media and the next morning, December 17, 2024, Chelsea finally confirmed the FA had notified Mudryk of an adverse finding in a routine urine test, believed to be for the banned substance meldonium. 

Mudryk released his own statement on Instagram insisting he had no idea how it could have happened, adding: ‘I cannot say any more now due to the confidentiality of the process, but I will as soon as I can.’

He has not spoken publicly since – despite fake quotes occasionally circulating on social media, along with false stories suggesting he wants to represent the Ukrainian track team at the 2028 Olympics – though he has cryptically changed his Instagram profile. 

His bio now reads: ‘Watch how they hate.’ His profile picture is of Patrick Bateman, the American Psycho character played by Christian Bale who is both a Wall Street investment banker and a serial killer, in a scene zoning out everyone else with eyes closed and headphones on, listening to The Lady in Red by Chris De Burgh.

It was June 18, 2025 when the FA charged Mudryk and that is where we are now: waiting for word on an outcome. It is a painfully slow process. Secrecy surrounds its status due to its confidential nature. Nobody relevant is allowed to reveal where the case is currently at.

He faces up to a four-year ban if found guilty, though that would be the worst-case scenario and he would be able to appeal.

The Ukrainian national team have missed him. They are in the play-offs for the 2026 World Cup and would love him back. Chelsea have had no choice but to plough on without him, bringing in Alejandro Garnacho and Jamie Gittens this summer to compete on the left wing.

Mudryk was pictured a few weeks back, wearing Chelsea-branded tracksuit bottoms, after a meeting with Shakhtar Donetsk chief executive Serhii Palkin on a film in the works by Hollywood screenwriters Paul Tamasy and Eric Johnson about the Ukrainian club and the war.

He has had plenty of time for pursuing side projects like the Shakhtar film – and watching Chelsea games on television from home – and his longer, darker hair was a reminder of how long it had been since we last saw him due to this suspension.

Palkin has gone on record as backing Mudryk’s innocence, reminding us all that this a human being at the centre of this story and adding that he does not care about the £26million in add-ons which were built into his £88m move from Shakhtar to Chelsea in January 2023.

We are told Mudryk passed a voluntary lie detector test to prove he had never knowingly taken a banned substance. 

Exactly how the meldonium might have entered his system remains unclear. It has been claimed it happened while away on international duty with Ukraine, though the Ukrainian FA have insisted that none of their staff were involved. Daily Mail Sport received no reply when we tried texting Andriy Shevchenko, the former Chelsea striker who is currently the assocation’s president.

It is believed Mudryk has largely stayed around London over the last year, though he is unable to train with his Chelsea team-mates or even visit Cobham. 

It is understood he has been working with an external trainer as, if and when he is allowed to return to playing professional football, he wants to be ready. As a deeply religious man, it is said he has faith that can happen. Chelsea are limited in how much help they can provide their player, but insiders will tell you they trust and support him.

Mudryk never wanted any of this, especially after hitting headlines previously for reasons away from football. 

He had only been at Chelsea for a few weeks when The Sun found an old Tik Tok video showing Mudryk reciting a 2017 rap by American artist Lil Baby which included the N-word.

He apologised and accepted it was wholly inappropriate, but Daily Mail Sport has been told that Mudryk took that hard, seeing himself splashed on the front page of a national newspaper with an ‘£88m Chelsea star’s N-word shame’ headline.

Now, he has had a year of hearing his name associated with doping when he would much rather be discussed for his talents on the pitch.

His speed (clocked at 22.8mph on his debut at Anfield in January 2023, the fastest in the league at that point of the season) impressed several clubs tracking him, but there was one match in particular which made a few talent-spotters suspect he could be someone special.

Background checks suggested he was a shy boy and his grasp on English was not the greatest, but a trip to Celtic Park on October 25, 2022 told those in attendance that he could play a hell of a game at 22 years old.

He scored a screamer in a 1-1 draw to send Celtic crashing out of the Champions League, and one source there that night tells Daily Mail Sport: ‘He’s one who I thought would be getting talked about, like how we’re all talking about Cole Palmer now.’

It is understood it was around this time that Chelsea first made contact to declare their interest in doing a deal, and they landed him from under Arsenal’s noses in the winter window that followed. 

Now, they have been unable to use their 24-year-old Ukrainian for an entire year, and Mudryk can only hope he will be allowed to make up for lost time, sooner rather than later.