5 hours ago
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Mykola Lykhovydov half-boils a kettle and, pausing slightly for dramatic effect, decants its contents into the waiting glasses. The water comes from an artesian well close to this small, rickety dressing room that doubles as a clubhouse. They say it flows from 80 metres underground and should be consumed just like this, served a little above body temperature and sipped gently so the body’s cells can properly hydrate. Nobody at FK Real Pharma would drink anything else before training and Lykhovydov swears by an extra benefit. “A doctor from Dynamo Kyiv told me this is the best water in Ukraine,” he announces. “It is the secret of eternal youth.”
Whether marvel or myth, the regimen is serving Lykhovydov well. He turned 59 in January and is, as far as anybody knows, the oldest active professional footballer in the world. At almost a year older than the Japanese great Kazuyoshi Miura he lays convincing claim to the record and has no intention of stopping here. He can still do a job in the Ukrainian third tier. “I was thinking I’d make it to 50,” he says. “But now I’m almost 60 I won’t put limits on myself.”
A goods train rattles along the railway line on a raised bank behind the building. The effort needed to keep Ukraine moving in wartime is lost on nobody in Odesa’s northern suburbs, which have spent nearly three and a half years under constant threat. Lykhovydov moves outside as it passes and situates himself next to a small putting green; the rest of Real Pharma’s players have finished the first phase of today’s training session and shortly he will join them on Stadion Ivan’s pitch.
There is a specific procedure to undergo first. “Like the haka,” he laughs while administering a full-body pat-down that he says loosens the muscles and promotes lymph drainage. About 15 years ago he felt an inflamed sciatic nerve and was advised such a warm-up could keep him playing. He jogs over to his teammates, many of them less than a third of his age, and takes command of the nearest available ball.
These are modest surroundings, the seating that flanks one side of the field never extending beyond two rows deep. Behind the far corner flag is a large cage housing chickens and cockerels. Real Pharma play their home games here and it is often a struggle: when we meet they are nailed on to finish bottom of the second league’s Group A, although there will at least be no relegation. “Four of our players are 17,” says Borys Tyshkul, the sporting director, as he watches the session. “Youngsters can sign their first pro agreements with us and maybe it’s a passport for them to climb higher. They earn €200 (£170) or €300 a month plus a win bonus but there have only been two of those this season.”
Lykhovydov is an outlier in this team of raw hopefuls, many of them the products of local academies such as the nearby giants Chernomorets. But he has made a contribution to their campaign as a poised attacking midfielder through semi-regular starts and judiciously chosen cameos from the bench. The previous week he played his 11th and, it turns out, final match of 2024-25; those outings brought two goals, both from the penalty spot. “If I’ve gone out there and brought results then I’ll probably start the next game,” he says. “Otherwise, most likely I’ll be on the bench and play a few minutes at the end. If my performance is low, I won’t play much.”
A significant further dimension comes into play here: it bears mentioning that Lykhovydov is also Real Pharma’s president and, through the pharmaceutical company he runs, its owner. “I dreamed of being a pro, I wanted to play at a high level,” he says. “So I grabbed this dream with my own hands, and made it myself.”
It should be emphasised that he was no dilettante when, in July 2011 and at the age of 45, he finally made his professional debut in a match against Prykarpattya Ivano-Frankivsk. He had shown considerable promise as a youngster before his parents, a working-class couple employed by a coal mine in Kuyalnik, insisted he prioritise his education. He taught Ukrainian history at Odesa’s medical university before starting his business but football remained a daily presence.
“I’d created teams ever since childhood,” he says. “At school, in my home village Novaya Kovalivka, at university, then at senior level.” As a player-coach he enjoyed success in regional competitions, eventually creating the club that became Real Pharma at the turn of the millennium. They won three consecutive Odessa cup competitions at amateur level before turning professional in 2011. Lykhovydov may have built himself a dream, but Real Pharma had proved themselves ready to make the next step.
There have been flirtations with greater success across 14 years and, for Lykhovydov, close to 200 appearances. A bittersweet memory is the final matchday in 2016-17, when Real Pharma were a win from the playoffs for promotion to the second tier. “We had to beat Nyva Vinnytsia,” he remembers. “They dominated but 10 minutes before the end our right-back scored. We were super happy but they equalised late on and that was it. It was a range of emotions only sport can give you. I don’t know where I can find a similar rush.”
At this level of Ukrainian football it is, given the wider context, a minor miracle Real Pharma can keep going at all. A few hours later that fact is reiterated when, while sitting in the Lykhovydov family’s back yard, an explosion caused by a ballistic missile attack on nearby Chernomorsk makes the ground shake. Earlier in the war, two missiles destroyed a building 100 metres away while his wife, Viktoriia, and daughter Lada were at home.
“A week after Russia’s invasion we gathered for training,” Lykhovydov says. “Of course, in those early days, half the players told me they wanted to join the army. I went to the mobilisation point with my son Andriy but they had no weapons left so told us they would be in touch later. So I had to tell the players: ‘Let’s do what we love and know, playing football, and see how it goes.’ This is our life now.”
On 24 February 2022, the first day of the full-scale invasion, Lykhovydov drove to Odesa’s city centre to make sure his 50 employees had enough cash to spend in the absence of functioning ATMs. Later he began delivering medicines and other practical aid such as heaters, sourced through his company, to soldiers based near the frontline. As the situation in parts of southern Ukraine snowballed into a full-blown humanitarian crisis, he brought children’s clothes and food to some of the worst-affected areas.
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“Companies and individuals we did business with, from around the continent, would contact me asking what we need,” he says. “Sometimes I’d have two minibuses filled with aid; we were just told to give it to whoever needed it as long as it wasn’t for sale. We felt all of Europe with us. In 2022 there was such a huge uprising of spirits that, if we’d received all the weapons we needed, we would have won the war already.”
That day is yet to arrive, so Lykhovydov continues to juggle business with football. He describes how corruption, a wearingly familiar staple in Odesa since the collapse of the USSR, virtually ceased three years ago but has made a return in subtler ways through spurious check-ups and fines. “If it wasn’t for football I wouldn’t be able to do the rest of my work,” he says. “It gives me strength and inspiration to do other things.”
He makes sure Real Pharma’s players are paid on time. On a typical week he will join them for three of their four training sessions, devoting the rest of his day to company business. “I’ll often take a 15- or 20-minute nap some time between 4pm and 6pm,” he says. “But not half an hour, that’s too much.”
Can he still pull his weight? “He doesn’t have speed but has good vision,” laughs the 25-year-old Andriy, who has captained Real Pharma and made his own piece of history when debuting at the age of 14 years, nine months and five days in 2014. “Call him Zidane.” Even if his teenaged companions do most of the running for him, on the training pitch there is ample evidence of a cushioned first touch and varied passing range.
Lykhovydov has undoubtedly been fortunate: he has possessed the means to turn a pipedream into solid, material reality. But there is little querying his seriousness, both when channelled towards Real Pharma’s future and maintaining his own spry physical condition. “It was never my aim to be the world’s oldest player, that possibility only occurred to me a couple of years ago,” he says. The club have written to Fifa, which is yet to provide official confirmation of the record.
When the war has finished, Real Pharma hope to leverage some of Tyshkul’s international contacts and sign players from countries such as Georgia, Serbia and Poland. They would like to make a go of things. Perhaps, at that point, time and sporting imperatives may overtake Lykhovydov at last. “I will always have an opportunity to finish,” he says. There is little suggestion that he will take it just yet.
