BIOGRAPHY
Andrei Xepkin remains the only player to have won the EHF Champions League Men seven times - six times with FC Barcelona, and once with THW Kiel.
The line player was born in Zaporizhzhya in Ukraine, when the country was still part of the Soviet Union. At well over two metres in height, taking up handball was an obvious choice, and Xepkin played for the local team and the Soviet Union until the fall of the USSR, winning silver at the 1990 IHF Men’s World Championship.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, it was time to go abroad, and at 28 years old Xepkin moved to Spain to join Puleva Maristas in Malaga. He spent one season there, and then one season at Avidsea Alzira. Although he said later the season in Alzira was one of his worst ever, he attracted the attention of Barcelona and joined the club at the height of its dominance. With Barça, Xepkin won six Champions League titles.
He took Spanish citizenship in 1997 and played his first match for Spain in a friendly against Italy in September that year, scoring five goals in each of the two games played. For the next four years, Xepkin was a regular in the ‘Hispanos’ squad, earning 78 caps and scoring 226 goals in total. His penultimate international game was in fact against Ukraine at the 2001 World Championship, with his last official game against Russia.
Xepkin retired from his club career in 2005, but two years later THW Kiel came calling after line player Marcus Ahlm was injured in the first leg of the Champions League semi-finals. Xepkin came out of retirement to join Kiel for the second leg and the final, writing his name in the history books as the German side took victory.
In 2013 Xepkin was named the best line player of the first 20 years of the Champions League. He now works as a coach, with jobs including coaching Barcelona’s youth team.
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