Chelsea winger Mykhailo Mudryk banned from CS2 and football

Jack Stewart, Senior Editor

Last Updated: 04/02/2026

Ukraine and Chelsea footballer Mykhailo Mudryk has received a month-long ban from competitive Counter-Strike 2 (CS2) platform FACEIT.

The Premier League winger was suspended from football for up to four years after failing a drug test back in December 2024.

Now, he is serving a month-long ban from playing CS2 on FACEIT after making offensive comments.

While playing, Mudryk made several offensive comments referencing the ‘Massacres of Poles’ in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia during World War 2.

Various screenshots of typed messages Mudryk sent were allegedly released, including one where he said “volyn next map.”

This was in reference to Volhynia, a site notorious for the Ukrainian massacre of Polish people in the 1940s.

The massacres and German invasion of Poland resulted in the loss of approximately six million Polish lives throughout the war.

Reportedly, this stemmed from CS2 players mocking Mudryk for his failed drug test.

According to FACEIT’s banning policy, four-week (28-day) bans are issued to accounts that have previously committed offences.

Once the ban ends, an offending account has a three-month probation period to avoid further punishments.

A third toxicity ban can lead to a one-year suspension from the FACEIT platform.

In December 2024, Mudryk tested positive for meldonium, a medication and performance-enhancing drug banned by The FA.

June saw the player test positive once again in another test, resulting in a suspension of up to four years.

It has been banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) since 2016.

After testing positive, Mudryk was handed a provisional suspension and hasn’t played in an official football match since November 28, 2024.

Football players and CS2

As a fast-paced and competitive game, CS2 remains popular with a surpirsing amount of professional footballers.

Neymar is a vocal fan of the game, having partnered with esports organisation FURIA and played over 11,000 hours on the game.

Meanwhile, Mudryk’s Ukraine teammate Oleksandr Zinchenko has his own CS2 esports team.

Passion UA regularly competes at Tier-1 events and is currently ranked 28th in the Valve Global Rankings.

In addition to that, former West Ham midfielder Lucas Paquetá used screenshots from a Counter-Strike groupchat during a trial.

The midfielder was accused of intentionally getting yellow cards to spot fix for bets.

It was joked in the chat that Paquetá would pick up a third yellow card to get a suspension and be free to join their gaming session.

However, an independent Regulatory Commission accepted that this was an innocent joke.

Jack Stewart, Senior Editor

In my seven years of esports writing, I've introduced esports coverage to newspapers, interviewed some of the biggest names in the industry, and driven viewers mad with the puns in my YouTube scripts. I'm most proud of the latter.

All Posts By Jack Stewart