Ukrainian Footballer of the Year

The Ukrainian Footballer of the Year is an annual poll carried out by the Ukrainskiy Football ("Ukrainian Football") newspaper. The poll is conducted among sports journalists, footballers, football managers and other people connected with football.

The purpose of the poll is to select the best Ukrainian footballer since 1969. Establishment of the poll was influenced by the French football award "Ballon d'Or" and later similar poll established in the Soviet Union. In the Soviet Union, sports journalists of the Soviet sports magazine "Futbol-Khokey" (Football-Ice Hockey) in 1964 initiated a similar poll as it was carried out by the French magazine France Football. Unlike France Football, Futbol-Khokey was not giving an award like Ballon D'Or, but published results of the poll that it supposed to carried out among its journalists. Whether or not the poll was actually held or any of sports journalists were asked for their opinion, cannot be verified.

Few years later a similar poll started to be held for the Ukrainian footballers on initiative of the newspaper Molod Ukrayiny ("The Youth of Ukraine") published by the Ukrainian branch of Komsomol (LKSMU, not VLKSM). As a sidenote, in the Soviet Union, anything to do with sport was supervised by the Komsomol. Since starting to be held during the Soviet period, the Ukrainian Footballer of the Year poll is carried out to cast a vote for footballer who are native Ukrainians and so such tradition was kept following the fall of the Soviet Union.

Sometime in 1990s Molod Ukrayiny started to publish a separate specialized addition that was concentrated on football, Ukrainskiy Futbol (Ukrainian football). Since 1991 the voting for the Ukrainian Footballer of the Year was taking place in Ukrainskiy Futbol, which with time transformed into a separate sports newspaper.

There is also another award of the best footballer in the Ukrainian Premier League that was established in 1995 by the other newspaper Komanda. That award is not restricted to the Ukrainian nationals as in case of Ukrainian Football, but rather to the Premier League players.