A shooting range and five bullets: the other side of Vanat's goals at Girona

GironaVladyslav Vanat is an unassuming man. In Girona, he goes unnoticed. He leads a quiet life, without incident. Little is known about him off the pitch. But when he steps onto the field, it's a different story. The striker unleashes his full potential: he runs, presses, and makes countless runs. Everyone there knows who he is. An undisputed starter, he has fit in well with Míchel's system. Quite the opposite of his replacement at Dinamo Kyiv, the Moldovan Vladislav Blanuta. He's having a tough time.

Vanat's signing for Girona last summer, for approximately €15 million, led the Ukrainian club to sign Blanuta as his replacement, but now they want to get rid of him. In the few months he's been with the club, Blanuta has had to endure brutal harassment from fans, who set social media ablaze just hours after his signing was announced. The reason? They allegedly labeled him as pro-Russian.

The story, published by Realpolitik, the magazine's podcast PanenkaHe explains that Dynamo fans realized Blanuta had shared content from Vladimir Solovyov, one of Vladimir Putin's biggest propagandists, who has often advocated for intensifying the invasion of Ukraine and even called for the use of nuclear weapons, or suggested which other countries Russia should use them in. They also accused the footballer of sharing music from Brigade, a television series banned in Ukraine for being considered Russian advertising.

Dinamo rushed to his defense, and Blanuta himself confessed: "It was a mistake to publish certain things. I didn't know who those people were or what their role was in Russian propaganda. I am completely pro-European and pro-Ukrainian. And I want to show the fans that I share their opinion on the Russian war. I have never said anything against Ukraine." Throughout these months, the external attacks have been unbearable.

The footballer has received death threats and a vicious campaign that has hampered his adaptation to Dynamo Kyiv. Before the league had even started, the radical group White Boys Club (Dinamo's ultras) shared a video in which Blanuta's image appears as a target on a shooting range. What follows is chilling: five shots are heard, all hitting him in the forehead. The video is accompanied by a message: "Let your apologies be for one place only. This damned demon will no longer live in Kyiv."

Things haven't gone well on the pitch either. Blanuta has barely played 168 minutes in the league and hasn't scored a single goal. He hasn't stood out in other competitions either: he didn't score in the only cup match and in the Conference, in three games, he only found the net in a 6-0 win against Zrinjski Mostar, where he sealed the victory. He hasn't played since November 9th and rumors suggest he'll be leaving this winter transfer window, but first he needs to resolve the FIFA situation, because he has already played for two clubs this season and, according to regulations, cannot play for a third.

Vanat, goalscorer at Montilivi

Vanat, on the other hand, is standing out positively at Montilivi in a very complicated season for Girona, who eased their situation with Sunday's victory in Mallorca, which lifted them out of the relegation zone. This Saturday they host Osasuna (6:30 p.m., Movistar LaLiga) in another crucial match for their survival in the top flight.

Míchel will give the Ukrainian striker the starting spot, and he has proven with his goals that he can be trusted. He has scored five in seventeen matches and is the team's joint top scorer, along with his teammate Viktor Tsygankov. Both of them, in fact, scored at Son Moix. If we take the numbers of the strikers signed by Girona last season as a reference, Vanat already surpasses them: Abel Ruiz scored 4 goals in 32 matches and Miovski, who is no longer with the club, scored 4 in 23. Beating Artem Dovbyk will be another matter entirely: he scored 24 in 39 and was the first to score.