Plymouth’s Ukrainian goalscorer reveals he hasn’t seen his father for three and a half years in emotional interview after FA Cup loss to Man City

Plymouth Argyle defender Maksym Talovierov revealed after Saturday’s FA Cup defeat by Manchester City that he has not seen his Ukrainian father for three and a half years.

Talovierov gave Plymouth a dream start at the Etihad Stadium when he headed the Championship strugglers 1-0 up against the reigning English champions in the 38th minute.

City hit back with two goals from Nico O’Reilly and another from Kevin De Bruyne to eventually prevail 3-1 and book a spot in the quarter-finals.

But Talovierov was still very proud of his side’s performance when he spoke to ITV after the final whistle.

‘Happy to play here against the best team in the world against really fantastic players,’ he said.

‘We are a bit upset because of the result but I hope our fans will be proud of us because we tried to do our best and we gave 100 per cent.

Talovierov was spoken to by Man City manager Pep Guardiola (left) before leaving the pitch

‘We really appreciated the [away] fans, around 10,000 of them and we appreciated it so much. We tried to do our best.’ 

Talovierov then revealed that his father, 53-year-old former footballer Vadym Talovierov, had helped him to prepare for Saturday’s match, despite being more than 1,000 miles away in Kyiv.

He also explained that he had not seen his dad for a long time due to the ongoing war in Ukraine.

‘He sends me a lot of information about the strikers,’ Talovierov said of his father. ‘He really helps me. We worked a lot with him this week. It really helped me.

‘We didn’t speak a lot about scoring and set pieces but he helps me a lot. He spends a lot of time doing it.’

In an emotional interview, Talovierov added: ‘It’s around three and a half years since I’ve seen him.

‘We have a really hard situation right now, but these few hours we have just to focus on the game and football helps us to forget it and for our warriors and supporters in Ukraine they try to watch and forget things.

‘I’m really proud of them, hard situation but we will try to help our people and win this war as fast as possible.’ 

Plymouth scored first against City when No 40 Talovierov headed home from a corner kick

Talovierov pictured battling for the ball against Erling Haaland (right) during the second half

Talovierov joined Plymouth from LASK in Austria at the end of January.

He had previously played for Slovan Liberec, Slavia Prague and Dynamo Ceske Budejovice in the Czech Republic, having had earlier spells at Olimpik Donetsk, Arsenal Kyiv and Shakhtar Donetsk in his home country.