Andrei Antanasovich Kanchelskis (; ; born 23 January 1969) is a professional football manager and former player. He was most recently the manager of Navbahor Namangan in the Uzbekistan Super League. During his playing career, he won two Premier League titles in England and two Scottish Premier Leagues.
Kanchelskis began his career with his hometown team Zirka Kropyvnytskyi in 1986, before transferring to Dynamo Kyiv in the Soviet Top League, and later to rivals Shakhtar Donetsk. He then moved abroad, signing for English club Manchester United, where he helped the team win their first league championship in 26 years. He moved to Everton in 1995 where he spent 18 months, before transferring to Italian club Fiorentina for a record fee for a Soviet-born player. Following an injury-marred spell in Italy, Kanchelskis moved to Scottish club Rangers, where he won a domestic treble in his first season. After falling out of favour, his career became nomadic, playing for Manchester City and Southampton in England, and Saudi club Al Hilal, before playing in Russia for the first time for Saturn Ramenskoye and Krylia Sovetov, where he played his last games before retiring in 2007. Kanchelskis is the only player to have scored in each of the Manchester, Merseyside, and Glasgow derbies.
After his playing career had finished, Kanchelskis became the general director of Nosta Novotroitsk in 2008, before moving into club management in 2010, managing Torpedo-ZIL Moscow and Ufa in Russia, and then Latvian team Jūrmala in 2014 for three months. In 2016, Kanchelskis returned to management with Solyaris Moscow, and between 2018 and 2020, he had two spells in charge of Navbahor Namangan in Uzbekistan.
Internationally, Kanchelskis represented three different teams. He first played for the Soviet Union in 1989, and scored the nations' last ever goal before the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. During 1992, he played for the CIS, a brief association of former Soviet republics, who he represented at UEFA Euro 1992. Following the tournament, he elected to represent Russia rather than Ukraine, the country of his birth. After boycotting the team for the 1994 FIFA World Cup, he returned and played for Russia during Euro 1996, and won his last cap in 1998. Overall, Kanchelskis was capped 59 times, scoring seven goals. In his youth career for the Soviet Union U21 team, he won the European U21 Championship in 1990.
Club career
Early life and career in the Soviet Union
Kanchelskis was born in Kirovohrad in the Soviet Union's Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic to a Lithuanian father, Antanas, and a Ukrainian mother. Kanchelskis started his career with hometown team Zirka Kropyvnytskyi, known at the time as Zirka Kirovograd. In 1988, he was called up to the army, and had the choice of two teams to transfer to - Dynamo Kyiv and Dnipro. Choosing Dynamo, he received a salary of 250 rubles per month, and described his time in the army as a "good school of life". At Dynamo, Kanchelskis was coached by the legendary Valeriy Lobanovskyi, who he believes is the best manager he played for. Lobanovskyi favoured a 4–4–2 formation, a system which focussed on getting the ball to the flanks and crossing into the penalty box, which Kanchelskis describes as an "English style of play". Kanchelskis had decided to become a winger having seen Brazilian Jairzinho playing in his youth.
His first goal for Dynamo came on 4 November 1988 at the Republican Stadium, scoring the equalising goal against Dynamo Moscow in a 2–1 victory. Kanchelskis eventually decided to leave Dynamo due to lack of game time, causing upset to his mentor Lobanovskyi, who he admired and respected greatly. He then transferred to Shakhtar Donetsk in 1990, where his salary was increased to 700 rubles per week.
Moving to England with Manchester United
Kanchelskis signed for Manchester United in a £650,000 deal on 26 March 1991, with United manager Alex Ferguson describing it as a "justifiable risk". Ferguson had discovered Kanchelskis through a VHS tape sent to him by Norwegian agent Rune Hauge, and had been able to personally scout him during a Soviet Union match against Scotland. At the time, Kanchelskis was a rarity in English football, being one of just 11 players in the First Division from outside the British Isles.