Sergey Kovalchuk is a Moldavian footballer of Soviet origin. Relatively recently, he ended his career when he was 32 years old. Sergei Kovalchuk acted as a central midfielder, but if necessary, could advance forward to the position of a playmaker, as well as move to the left flank of the midfield.
Carier start
Sergey Kovalchuk was born on January 20, 1982 in Soviet Odessa, where he began to play football. He entered the football academy of the local Chernomorets club, where he trained for up to fifteen years. However, in 1997, a fifteen-year-old guy moved to Moldova, where he joined the Tiligul Club Academy. It was there that he flourished, starting to play for the main team very early - at the age of sixteen. Sergey Kovalchuk received Moldovan citizenship and up to 2002 he played for Tiligul. He made his debut for an adult team in 1998, having played six matches, and since the next year, the 17-year-old talent has become a regular base player. In 2000, he marked his first goal, and in the 01/02 season he managed to score as many as five goals. In total for the Moldavian club, the football player played 81 matches, scoring seven goals. However, the aforementioned season 01/02 Kovalchuk did not finish in Moldova - he returned to his homeland, having signed a contract with the Lviv club Karpaty, which paid Tiligulu 250 thousand euros for the transfer.
Homecoming
Sergey Kovalchuk is a football player who at that time was considered incredibly talented, so he immediately began to play in the main team of the new club. In the first half of the season he entered the field 13 times, and for the other two - 29 and 30 times, respectively. During this time, he was noted by four more goals, and, of course, such a talent could not stay away from the attention of larger clubs. In the summer of 2004, the 22-year-old midfielder was noticed by the Moscow Spartak, which laid out almost two million euros for it. So he moved to Russia and joined the club, with which an impressive part of his career will be connected.
Relocation to Russia
In 2004, Kovalchuk was able to play only the second half of the current season, but already marked 14 outings on the field. After that, he almost always got into the base of the club, but he was chased by injuries that did not allow him to play on an ongoing basis. In 2006, he played 37 matches per season, and in 2007 - just five. As a result, for five and a half years spent in the club, Kovalchuk played 90 matches, scoring two goals. By that time, his contract with the club came to an end, and he decided to change his residence permit - the main reason was that he was getting less and less into the starting lineup, and as time went on, and the midfielder wanted to get a game practice. So in the winter of 2010, the 27-year-old footballer moved to Tom, with whom he signed a contract for two years.
Transition to Tom
In the new club, the midfielder immediately appeared in the starting lineup, having received exactly what he was striving for. He played twenty-five matches, after which he received an offer from Pearl from Sochi, which he could not refuse. Tom received 700 thousand euros in compensation, and Kovalchuk moved to a new Russian club - by that time he had even managed to obtain Russian citizenship.
The last years of his career
However, in the “Pearl” the football player did not stay long - he spent only six months in the club, playing 13 matches, and then went to his homeland, where he was already waiting for “Chernomorets”, in which he began to play football. Sergey played for this club for less than a year and in April 2012 announced that he was completing a professional career. However, three months later, Kovalchuk said that he had signed a contract with Kazakhstan's Aktobe (the football club himself invited him to return), thereby resuming performances at a professional level. He spent another year and a half at the new place, having played 24 matches and scoring two goals, became the champion of Kazakhstan in 2013, and in January 2014 announced the final completion of his career.