Canadian soccer talent Fadi Salback became the first player from football club Vorkuta (Toronto) to sign a professional contract in soccer-crazed Ukraine.

TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA, December 2, 2020 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Canadian soccer talent Fadi Salback became the first player from football club Vorkuta (Toronto) to sign a professional contract in soccer-crazed Ukraine. The transfer from Toronto to Ukraine’s Podillya Khmelnytskyi FC was successfully completed despite disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Salback made an immediate splash as the fall season began in October, scoring five goals in his first six games in the European professional league.

Now, when he walks through Khmelnytskyi, Ukraine, the town’s residents recognize the young soccer striker as a celebrity. “When they find out you are from Canada, people look at you a little strange,” Fadi Salback said in a phone interview last week with a smile, knowing he’s playing a part in changing the reputation of Canada as more than just a hockey and basketball nation.

Salback pursued his soccer passion by playing at various Ontario junior teams before he was scouted by Toronto’s FC Vorkuta in 2019. “It was always my dream to go to Europe and play professionally. My success is thanks to FC Vorkuta’s coaches and its team,” Salback remarked.

The club is the vision of Igor Demitchev, a Toronto-based lawyer who grew up in Vorkuta, a city in Russia's Arctic circle that is known for its association with the Gulag, a network of Soviet forced labour camps under Joseph Stalin. So Demitchev decided to feature barbed wire on the team's jerseys to pay tribute to the victims who suffered in the Gulag in his hometown.  

"We are beyond thrilled with the fact that our player, whom we trained in Ontario, was picked by a European club. It is a perfect example of how FC Vorkuta helps to develop soccer in Canada. We hope that soon Canadian soccer players will become as famous as its hockey stars," said FC Vorkuta's president, Igor Demitchev about the success of Fadi Salback.

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